C vs Kotlin: Rating, Votes and Features
- License: C — Open standard; Kotlin — Apache-2.0.
- Paradigms: C — Procedural; Kotlin — Functional, Object-oriented.
- Memory management: C — Manual; Kotlin — Garbage collected.
C — November 2026: 2 votes, rating 7.3/10.
Kotlin — November 2026: 5 votes, rating 7.5/10.
| C | Kotlin | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | programming language | programming language |
| Developer | ISO C committee (WG14) | JetBrains |
| Created by | Dennis Ritchie | Andrey Breslav |
| First release | 1972 | 2011 |
| License | Open standard | Apache-2.0 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| Website | https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14 | https://kotlinlang.org |
| Paradigms | Procedural | Functional, Object-oriented |
| Typing | Static | Static |
| Type strength | Weak | Strong |
| Type inference | No | Yes |
| Memory management | Manual | Garbage collected |
| Runs as | Native code | Bytecode on a virtual machine |
| Main implementation | GCC, Clang, MSVC | Kotlin/JVM, also Native and JS |
| Concurrency | Threads (C11 threads, POSIX threads), atomics | Coroutines |
| Null safety | No | Yes |
| Package manager | None | Gradle, Maven |
| Used for | Embedded, Systems | Back end, Mobile |
| Specification | ISO/IEC 9899 | Kotlin Language Specification |