FlatBuffers is a cross platform serialization library architected for maximum memory efficiency. It allows you to directly access serialized data without parsing/unpacking it first, while still having great forwards/backwards compatibility. Why use FlatBuffers? * Access to serialized data without parsing/unpacking * Memory efficiency and speed * Flexible * Tiny code footprint * Strongly typed * Convenient to use * Cross platform code with no dependencies Why not use Protocol Buffers, or .. ? Protocol Buffers is indeed relatively similar to FlatBuffers, with the primary difference being that FlatBuffers does not need a parsing/ unpacking step to a secondary representation before you can access data, often coupled with per-object memory allocation. The code is an order of magnitude bigger, too. Protocol Buffers has no optional text import/export. If you would like to build the HTML documentation, pass DOCS=yes to the build script. If you would like to include the samples, pass SAMPLES=yes to the build script.