head to head · open source
rspack vs Bear
rspack has 12,911 GitHub stars, 853 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped today. Bear has 6,493 stars, 369 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. rspack leads on adoption by 99% (12,911 vs 6,493 stars). rspack is written in Rust under MIT; Bear is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. rspack has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Bear 6%. rspack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (build-tool), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| rspack | Bear | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 853 | ⑂ 369 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rspack if
- You weight community size — 13K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 rspack
Rspack is a fast bundler for the web written in Rust, distributed under the MIT license. It modernizes the webpack API so that webpack configurations can be replaced seamlessly, while the Rust core delivers fast build speeds. The project lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript build tooling ecosystem, and it is part of Rstack, a unified JavaScript toolchain that also includes Rsbuild, Rslib, Rspress, Rsdoctor, Rstest, and Rslint. The repository carries the topics build tool, bundler, compiler, esm, javascript, jsx, loaders, module bundler, rspack, rstack, rust, and typescript.
read the full rspack 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 rspack or Bear more popular?
rspack has 12,911 GitHub stars and Bear has 6,493. rspack has the larger community by that measure.
Are rspack and Bear free?
Both are open source. rspack is licensed under MIT and Bear under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rspack and Bear?
rspack is written in Rust 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, rspack or Bear?
Choose rspack if you want the larger community (12,911 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Bear if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.