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NameCommentsLicense
MessagePack
  • Schemaless binary format.
  • Compatible with JSON (can be directly converted convert to JSON and from JSON: an important use case)
  • The most popular among all. High-performance, well-maintained implementations exist for many languages.
  • Battle tested: used by Redis
Java: Apache 2.0, C#: MIT, C++: MIT (nlohmann/json), Python: Apache 2.0, JavaScript: MIT, PHP: MIT
CBOR
  • Based on MessagePack.
  • Less popular than MessagePack, fewer implementations, outdated PHP implementation.
  • Standardized (RFC7049), but MessagePack is simpler.
  • Included in stdlib in .NET 5.
  • "Use MsgPack instead of CBOR":  https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/6568.html
Java: Apache 2.0, C#: CC0, C++: MIT, Python: MIT, JavaScript: MIT, PHP: PHP License
FlexBuffers
  • "Schemaless cousin of Google's FlatBuffers". Can be accessed without parsing, copying, or allocation.
  • Can't serialize arbitrary objects at this point (in Java and C#)
  • Relatively new, has not gained traction

BSONDesigned for MongoDB storage and in-memory manipupation, not for network usage => more verbose than MessagePack/CBOR
UBJSONSeems to be abandoned, implementations (e.g. C#) are not maintained

Popular formats like Avro, Thrift, ProtoBuf, FlatBuffers and others are not mentioned, because the don't satisfy one or more requirements above (schemaless, etc).

Conclusion

  • MessagePack and CBOR satisfy all requirements (and they are very similar, though not compatible).
  • There seems to be no other contenders.

MessagePack is more widely used and has more mature and well-maintained implementations in all languages of interest.

Discussion Links

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Reference Links

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