head to head · open source
esbuild vs Bear
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Bear has 6,493 stars, 369 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 517% (40,063 vs 6,493 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; Bear is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Bear 6%. Bear was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| esbuild | Bear | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 369 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick esbuild if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Bear if
- You want the Bear feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Bear fits your workflow better
About esbuild
esbuild is an MIT licensed, Go based bundler for the web that compiles JavaScript, CSS, TypeScript, and JSX in one tool, aimed at front end developers and teams whose current web build pipelines are slower than they need to be.
read the full esbuild overview →
About Bear
Bear is a GPL 3.0, Rust based command line tool that produces a compile commands.json compilation database for any C or C++ build by recording the compiler invocations that run during it, and it is aimed at developers, code explorers, and CI jobs whose build systems cannot emit that database on their own.
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or Bear more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and Bear has 6,493. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and Bear free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and Bear under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and Bear?
esbuild is written in Go and Bear in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, esbuild or Bear?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,063 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Bear if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.