Comparison of data-serialization formats

This is a comparison of data serialization formats, various ways to convert complex objects to sequences of bits. It does not include markup languages used exclusively as document file formats.

Overview

Name	Creator-maintainer	Based on	Standardized?	Specification	Binary?	Human-readable?	Supports references?	Schema-IDL?	Standard APIs	Supports zero-copy operations
Apache Arrow	Apache Software Foundation								C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Julia, Matlab, Python, R, Ruby, Rust, Swift
Apache Avro	Apache Software Foundation								C, C#, C++, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby
Apache Parquet	Apache Software Foundation								Java, Python, C++
Apache Thrift	Facebook Apache								C++, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, Haskell, C#, Cocoa, JavaScript, Node.js, Smalltalk, OCaml, Delphi and other languages
ASN.1	ISO, IEC, ITU-T			ISO/IEC 8824 / ITU-T X.680 and ISO/IEC 8825 / ITU-T X.690 series. X.680, X.681, and X.683 define syntax and semantics.
Bencode	Bram Cohen BitTorrent, Inc.			Part of
BSON	MongoDB	JSON
Cap'n Proto	Kenton Varda
CBOR	Carsten Bormann, P. Hoffman	MessagePack		RFC 8949			, through tagging
Comma-separated values	RFC author: Yakov Shafranovich			RFC 4180
Common Data Representation	Object Management Group			General Inter-ORB Protocol					Ada, C, C++, Java, Cobol, Lisp, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk
D-Bus Message Protocol	freedesktop.org
Efficient [XML Interchange]	W3C	XML, Efficient XML
Extensible Data Notation	Rich Hickey / Clojure community	Clojure							Clojure, Ruby, Go, C++, Javascript, Java, CLR, ObjC, Python
FlatBuffers	Google								C++, Java, C#, Go, Python, Rust, JavaScript, PHP, C, Dart, Lua, TypeScript
Fast Infoset	ISO, IEC, ITU-T	XML		ITU-T X.891 and ISO/IEC 24824-1:2007
FHIR	Health Level 7	REST basics		Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources					Hapi for FHIR JSON, XML, Turtle
Ion	Amazon	JSON							C, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, Rust
Java serialization	Oracle Corporation
JSON	Douglas Crockford	JavaScript syntax		/RFC 8259 ,,	, but see BSON, Smile, UBJSON			, JSON-LD
MessagePack	Sadayuki Furuhashi	JSON
Netstrings	Dan Bernstein
OGDL	Rolf Veen
OPC-UA Binary	OPC Foundation
OpenDDL	Eric Lengyel	C, PHP
PHP serialization format	PHP Group
Pickle (Python)	Guido van Rossum	Python
Property list	NeXT Apple								,,,
Protocol Buffers	Google			,, and					C++, Java, C#, Python, Go, Ruby, Objective-C, C, Dart, Perl, PHP, R, Rust, Scala, Swift, Julia, D, ActionScript, Delphi, Elixir, Elm, Erlang, GopherJS, Haskell, Haxe, JavaScript, Kotlin, Lua, Matlab, Mercurt, OCaml, Prolog, Solidity, TypeScript, Vala, Visual Basic
	John McCarthy Ron Rivest	Lisp, Netstrings		Internet Draft	, canonical representation	, advanced transport representation
Smile	Tatu Saloranta	JSON
SOAP	W3C	XML
	Max Wildgrube			RFC 3072
UBJSON	The Buzz Media, LLC	JSON, BSON
eXternal Data Representation	Sun Microsystems IETF			/RFC 4506
XML	W3C	SGML
XML-RPC	Dave Winer	XML
YAML	Clark Evans, Ingy döt Net, and Oren Ben-Kiki	C, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, Email, HTML, MIME, URI, XML, SAX, SOAP, JSON
Name	Creator-maintainer	Based on	Standardized?	Specification	Binary?	Human-readable?	Supports references?	Schema-IDL?	Standard APIs	Supports zero-copy operations

Syntax comparison of human-readable formats

Format Null Boolean true Boolean false Integer Floating-point String Array Associative array/Object

ASN.1 true false 685230 6.8523015e+5 true

-42.1e7
A to Z
We said, "no". An object :

true

1.85
Bob Peterson

A data mapping :

John
3.14

Jane
2.718

CSV

null

1
true

0
false

685230
-685230

6.8523015e+5

true,,-42.1e7,"A to Z"

42,1
A to Z,1,2,3

edn nil true false 685230
-685230 6.8523015e+5 "A to Z", "A \"up to\" Z"

Ion null

null.null

null.bool

null.int

null.float

null.decimal

null.timestamp

null.string

null.symbol

null.blob

null.clob

null.struct

null.list

null.sexp true false 685230
-685230
0xA74AE
0b111010010101110 6.8523015e5 "A to Z"
A to Z

Netstrings 0:,
4:null, 1:1,
4:true, 1:0,
5:false, 6:685230, 9:6.8523e+5, 29:4:true,0:,7:-42.1e7,6:A to Z,,

JSON null true false 685230
-685230 6.8523015e+5

OGDL

null

true

false

685230

6.8523015e+5

"A to Z"
'A to Z'
NoSpaces

true
null
-42.1e7
"A to Z"

42
 true
"A to Z"
 1
 2
 3

42
 true
"A to Z",

OpenDDL

ref

bool

int32
int32
int32

float

string

Homogeneous array:

int32

Heterogeneous array:

array

dict

PHP serialization format N; b:1; b:0; i:685230;
i:-685230; d:685230.15;
d:INF;
d:-INF;
d:NAN; s:6:"A to Z"; a:4: Associative array:
a:2:
Object:
O:8:"stdClass":2:

Pickle (Python)

N.

I01\n.

I00\n.

I685230\n.

F685230.15\n.

S'A to Z'\n.

<*BY>

<*BN>

<*I685230>

<*R6.8523015e+5>

"A to Z"

Property list 685230 6.8523015e+5 -42.1e7
A to Z 42

A to Z

1
2
3

Protocol Buffers

true

false

685230
-685230

20.0855369

field1: "value1"
field1: "value2"
field1: "value3

anotherfield 
anotherfield

thing1: "blahblah"
thing2: 18923743
thing3: -44
thing4
enumeratedThing: SomeEnumeratedValue
thing5: 123.456
: "etc"
: EnumValue

S-expressions NIL
nil T
#t
true NIL
#f
false 685230 6.8523015e+5 abc
"abc"
#616263#
3:abc

|YWJj|

TOML

true

false

685230
+685_230
-685230
0x_0A_74_AE
0b1010_0111_0100_1010_1110

6.8523015e+5
685.230_15e+03
685_230.15
inf
-inf
nan

"A to Z"
'A to Z'

42 = y
"A to Z" =

YAML

~
null
Null
NULL

y
Y
yes
Yes
YES
on
On
ON
true
True
TRUE

n
N
no
No
NO
off
Off
OFF
false
False
FALSE

685230
+685_230
-685230
02472256
0x_0A_74_AE
0b1010_0111_0100_1010_1110
190:20:30

6.8523015e+5
685.230_15e+03
685_230.15
190:20:30.15
.inf
-.inf
.Inf
.INF
.NaN
.nan
.NAN

A to Z
"A to Z"
'A to Z'

- y
- -42.1e7
- A to Z

42: y
A to Z:

XML and SOAP true false 685230 6.8523015e+5 true

-42.1e7
A to Z true

XML-RPC 1 0 685230 6.8523015e+5 A to Z 1
-42.1e7
A to Z 42
1

A to Z

1
2
3

Comparison of binary formats

Format	Null	Booleans	Integer	Floating-point	String	Array	Associative array/object
ASN.1	type	:	:	:	Multiple valid types	Data specifications and	User definable type
BSON	`\x0A`	True: `\x08\x01` False: `\x08\x00`	int32: 32-bit little-endian 2's complement or int64: 64-bit little-endian 2's complement	Double: little-endian binary64	UTF-8-encoded, preceded by int32-encoded string length in bytes	BSON embedded document with numeric keys	BSON embedded document
Concise Binary Object Representation	`\xf6`
Efficient XML Interchange (EXI)	xsi:nil is not allowed in binary context.	1–2 bit integer interpreted as boolean.	Boolean sign, plus arbitrary length 7-bit octets, parsed until most-significant bit is 0, in little-endian. The schema can set the zero-point to any arbitrary number. Unsigned skips the boolean flag.		Length prefixed integer-encoded Unicode. Integers may represent enumerations or string table entries instead.	Length prefixed set of items.
FlatBuffers	Encoded as absence of field in parent object		Little-endian 2's complement signed and unsigned 8/16/32/64 bits		UTF-8-encoded, preceded by 32-bit integer length of string in bytes	Vectors of any other type, preceded by 32-bit integer length of number of elements	Tables or Vectors sorted by key
Ion	`\x0f`					`\xbx` Arbitrary length and overhead. Length in octets.
MessagePack	`\xc0`			Typecode + IEEE single/double	encoding is unspecified
Netstrings					Length-encoded as an ASCII string + ':' + data + ',' Length counts only octets between ':' and ','
OGDL Binary
Property list
Protocol Buffers					UTF-8-encoded, preceded by varint-encoded integer length of string in bytes	Repeated value with the same tag or, for varint-encoded integers only, values packed contiguously and prefixed by tag and total byte length
Smile	`\x21`			IEEE single/double, `BigDecimal`	Length-prefixed "short" Strings, marker-terminated "long" Strings and back-references	Arbitrary-length heterogenous arrays with end-marker	Arbitrary-length key/value pairs with end-marker
Structured Data eXchange Formats			Big-endian signed 24-bit or 32-bit integer	Big-endian IEEE double	Either UTF-8 or ISO 8859-1 encoded	List of elements with identical ID and size, preceded by array header with int16 length	Chunks can contain other chunks to arbitrary depth.
Thrift