C++ Community Chooses Best Libraries of the Year: 2024 Voting Results

C++ Community Chooses Best Libraries of the Year

The annual vote among C++ developers has concluded — the community has chosen the best libraries of the year. This time, the competition was particularly intense: over 15,000 participants cast their votes for projects they believe deserve the title of best. We have gathered the main results and are sharing which tools will help you write faster, cleaner, and safer code.

Nominations and Winners

The voting took place across four main categories. In each category, a clear leader emerged, surpassing its closest competitors by 20–30% of the votes.

• Best Utility: fmtlib/fmt — a modern alternative to printf and iostream. The library provides safe, fast, and extensible formatted string output. Developers noted its compatibility with C++20 and the ability to integrate into any project.
• Best Graphics Library: ocornut/imgui — Immediate Mode GUI. An ideal choice for debugging tools, level editors, and prototyping. Ease of use and high performance made it the favorite.
• Best Networking Library: nadjieb/cpp-httplib — a single-header library for HTTP/HTTPS requests. It won the community's favor thanks to its minimalist API and lack of external dependencies.
• Best Data Library: neargye/magic_enum — static reflection for enums. It allows converting enums to strings and back without macros — a rare and highly sought-after capability for C++.

Why These Libraries?

The community's choice is no coincidence. All winners solve real problems that every C++ developer faces:

• fmtlib eliminates the unsafety of printf and the verbosity of iostream, providing a unified {} format with compile-time type checking.
• imgui allows creating interfaces in just a few lines of code, which critically accelerates tool development.
• cpp-httplib makes working with HTTP transparent — a single header file replaces entire frameworks.
• magic_enum solves a long-standing pain point: the lack of built-in reflection for enums. The library works with pure C++17 and requires no code generation.

Trends of the Year

Analysis of the voting reveals several important trends. First, the community increasingly chooses libraries without external dependencies — "header-only" projects receive 40% more votes than monolithic frameworks. Second, there is growing interest in tools that simplify working with modern C++17/20 standards. Finally, developers value minimalism: the best libraries of the year average less than 10,000 lines of code but solve tasks that previously required entire frameworks.

How to Use the Winners?

All four libraries are available via the vcpkg and Conan package managers. For a quick start, simply include them using #include and follow the examples in the documentation. If you are not yet familiar with these tools — now is the perfect time to try them. They are free, open-source, and have an active community ready to help.

Stay tuned