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Top C repositories on GitHub

The lingua franca of operating systems, compilers, and embedded devices.

Ranked by stars across 18,605 C repositories on GitHub. Refreshed daily.

  1. 1
    torvalds/linux★ 249,368 · ⑂ 64,957

    Linux kernel source tree

  2. 2
    Genymobile/scrcpy★ 149,890 · ⑂ 13,765

    Display and control your Android device

    • android
    • c
    • sdl2
    • libav
    • ffmpeg
    • screen
  3. 3
    microsoft/PowerToys★ 138,803 · ⑂ 8,581

    Microsoft PowerToys is a collection of utilities that supercharge productivity and customization on Windows

    • powertoys
    • desktop
    • windows
    • fancyzones
    • microsoft-powertoys
    • powerrename
  4. 4
    ventoy/Ventoy★ 79,350 · ⑂ 4,937

    A new bootable USB solution.

    • bootable-usb
    • multiboot
    • uefi
    • legacy
    • iso-files
    • usb
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  6. 5
    redis/redis★ 76,397 · ⑂ 24,814

    For developers, who are building real-time data-driven applications, Redis is the preferred, fastest, and most feature-rich cache, data structure server, and document and vector query engine.

    • database
    • key-value
    • nosql
    • redis
    • caching
    • distributed-systems
  7. 6
    obsproject/obs-studio★ 76,340 · ⑂ 10,219

    OBS Studio - Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording

    • c
    • c-plus-plus
    • live-streaming
    • video-recording
    • screen-capture
    • game-capture
  8. 7
    colbymchenry/codegraph★ 71,362 · ⑂ 4,585

    Pre-indexed code knowledge graph, auto syncs on code changes, for Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, OpenCode, AntiGravity, Kiro, CoPilot, and Hermes Agent — fewer tokens, fewer tool calls, 100% local

  9. 8
    FFmpeg/FFmpeg★ 64,317 · ⑂ 14,274

    Mirror of https://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git

    • ffmpeg
    • video
    • audio
    • c
    • mpeg
    • webm
  10. 9
    git/git★ 63,210 · ⑂ 28,409

    Git Source Code Mirror - This is a publish-only repository but pull requests can be turned into patches to the mailing list via GitGitGadget (https://gitgitgadget.github.io/). Please follow Documentation/SubmittingPatches procedure for any of your improvements.

    • c
    • shell
    • hacktoberfest
  11. 10
    tmux/tmux★ 49,322 · ⑂ 2,893

    tmux source code

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  13. 11
    DeusData/codebase-memory-mcp★ 43,715 · ⑂ 3,557

    High-performance code intelligence MCP server. Indexes codebases into a persistent knowledge graph — average repo in milliseconds. 158 languages, sub-ms queries, 99% fewer tokens. Single static binary, zero dependencies.

    • claude-code
    • code-analysis
    • code-intelligence
    • developer-tools
    • knowledge-graph
    • mcp
  14. 12
    curl/curl★ 42,875 · ⑂ 7,363

    A command line tool and library for transferring data with URL syntax, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, MQTTS, POP3, POP3S, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET, TFTP, WS and WSS. libcurl offers a myriad of powerful features

    • http
    • https
    • ftp
    • user-agent
    • client
    • library
  15. 13
    wg/wrk★ 40,407 · ⑂ 3,031

    Modern HTTP benchmarking tool

  16. 14
    php/php-src★ 40,393 · ⑂ 8,145

    The PHP Interpreter

  17. 15
    pbatard/rufus★ 37,671 · ⑂ 3,167

    The Reliable USB Formatting Utility

    • usb
    • iso
    • bootable-drives
    • mbr
    • uefi
    • bios
  18. 16
    mpv-player/mpv★ 37,012 · ⑂ 3,524

    🎥 Command line media player

    • mpv
    • mplayer
    • c
    • ffmpeg
    • audio
    • video
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  20. 17
    JustVugg/colibri★ 35,903 · ⑂ 3,776

    Run frontier MoE models on hardware you already own — pure C, zero deps, experts streamed from disk. Tiny engine, immense model. 🐦

  21. 18
    jqlang/jq★ 35,616 · ⑂ 1,974

    Command-line JSON processor

    • jq
  22. 19
    raysan5/raylib★ 34,777 · ⑂ 3,296

    A simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy videogames programming

    • raylib
    • c
    • programming
    • opengl
    • android
    • embedded
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Find C engineers and maintainers

The list above ranks the most-starred public C repositories, drawn from the public GitHub graph. Across 18,605 C repositories in the public graph, the maintainers, top contributors, and recurring committers are a powerful signal for where C expertise lives.

Behind every popular C project is a small group of people who actually shipped it. They’re the C engineers, library authors, and infrastructure builders worth knowing - whether you’re hiring, partnering, or doing technical research.

Refolk turns this list into a search. Ask for “C maintainers hiring”, “contributors to C repos based in Europe”, or “companies whose engineers ship C” and Refolk returns a ranked shortlist with the commits, repos, and profiles that earned each person a spot.

How this list is built

Refolk searched GitHub for public repositories whose primary language is C, ranked them by stargazer count, and kept those with at least 100 stars. The list refreshes once a day.

Last refreshed: Fri, 18 Sep 2026 07:52:12 GMT

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How are these repositories ranked?

By stars, with forks and recent activity as tiebreakers, read from the public GitHub API. The methodology section above has the details.

How fresh is the data?

The ranking re-renders at least daily. Last refreshed: Fri, 18 Sep 2026 07:52:12 GMT.

Can I find the maintainers and contributors behind these repos?

Yes. Stars rank the projects; I can rank the engineers - maintainers, top contributors, and the people they work with. You start with 500 free credits, no card required.

Can I use this list for hiring?

That's the point. I read hiring signals across GitHub, LinkedIn, and the open web, so a repo list turns into a shortlist of engineers worth talking to.

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  1. 01Describe them

    One plain sentence. Role, city, stack, stage, whatever matters to you.

  2. 02I read the web live

    GitHub, public LinkedIn and Crunchbase records, the open web. Not a database that went stale last quarter.

  3. 03You read the shortlist

    Ranked, with the reasoning under every name. Open a profile, ask a follow-up, narrow it down.

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