head to head · open source
esbuild vs captain
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. captain has 777 stars, 48 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 5,056% (40,063 vs 777 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; captain is written in Go under MIT. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, captain 6%. captain 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 | captain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 777 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 48 |
| 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 captain if
- You want the captain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and captain 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 captain
Captain is an open source command line tool, written in Go and released under the MIT licence, that converts an existing Git workflow into Docker container images built, tested, and pushed on a per commit basis, and it is aimed at developers and CI pipelines that want continuous delivery without writing bespoke build and release scripts.
read the full captain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or captain more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and captain has 777. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and captain free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and captain under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and captain?
esbuild is written in Go and captain in Go. 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 captain?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,063 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose captain if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.