1chinousa1/cpp-order-book

2026-05-21

Language: C++

Link: https://github.com/1chinousa1/cpp-order-book

This repo is a from-scratch implementation of a limit order book matching engine in C++ — the kind of low-latency data structure that sits at the core of every electronic exchange on the planet. The author describes it simply as "high-performance," and while the repo is still fresh with zero stars, the problem space alone makes it worth a look.

A matching engine has to do something deceptively hard: maintain two sorted books (bids and asks), accept incoming orders, and match them against resting liquidity in price-time priority — all while servicing thousands or millions of operations per second. Done naively with a sorted container, you'll bleed performance on every insert and cancel. Done well, you end up with an intricate mix of intrusive linked lists, price-level hash maps, and arena allocators. It's one of the best teaching problems in systems programming.

Why this little repo is interesting:

Who would benefit:

The codebase is early, so contributions around testing, FIX adapters, or a benchmark harness would be high-leverage additions.

Why check it out: A hand-rolled C++ matching engine is one of the cleanest ways to learn low-latency systems programming, and this fresh repo is a solid blank canvas to read, fork, or contribute to.

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