# Protocol Buffers — developer ecosystem report

> A language-neutral, platform-neutral extensible mechanism for serializing structured data.

- GitHub org: `protocolbuffers`
- Category: dev_tool
- Overall score: 37.0 / 100
- Overall rank: #556
- Last refreshed: 2026-08-19

## Pillar scores

| Pillar | Score / 100 | Rank | Weight in overall |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Code & Polish | 43.0 | #645 | ~22% |
| Education | 48.0 | #812 | ~18% |
| AI readiness | 6.0 | #1004 | part of Reach |
| Builder experience | 0.0 | #1 | ~12% |
| Community | 45.0 | #252 | ~16% |
| Reach | 53.0 | #262 | ~18% |
| Momentum | 48.0 | #240 | ~14% |

## Links

- GitHub: https://github.com/protocolbuffers
- Website: https://developers.google.com
- Docs: https://developers.google.com/docs

## Public GitHub totals

| Metric | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Repos analyzed | 12 |
| Stars | 78,154 |
| Forks | 17,415 |
| Open issues | 499 |
| Contributors | — |

## Top repositories

| Repo | Stars | Language | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [protobuf](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf) | 71,738 | C++ | Protocol Buffers - Google's data interchange format |
| [protobuf-go](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf-go) | 3,347 | Go | Go support for Google's protocol buffers |
| [upb](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/upb) | 1,520 | C | a small protobuf implementation in C |
| [protobuf-javascript](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf-javascript) | 470 | JavaScript | — |
| [protoscope](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protoscope) | 433 | Go | Protoscope is a simple, human-editable language for representing and emitting the Protobuf wire format.  |
| [protobuf-php](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf-php) | 373 | PHP | This repository contains only PHP files to support Composer installation. This repository is a mirror of [protobuf](http |
| [txtpbfmt](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/txtpbfmt) | 131 | Go | txtpbfmt parses, edits and formats text proto files in a way that preserves comments. |
| [protocolbuffers.github.io](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protocolbuffers.github.io) | 68 | HTML | — |
| [protobuf-grammar](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf-grammar) | 28 | — | This repository contains grammars for parsing Protocol Buffers's .proto files |
| [utf8_range](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/utf8_range) | 21 | C | — |
| [protobuf-ci](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf-ci) | 9 | — | A shared repository for Protobuf CI actions |
| [.github](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/.github) | 6 | — | — |

## Methodology

Scores are computed from public signals only (GitHub, package registries, docs sites, community platforms). Pillar definitions: https://www.smoower.com/docs.md

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