head to head · open source
esbuild vs corrosion
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. corrosion has 1,498 stars, 150 forks, 71 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 2,574% (40,063 vs 1,498 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; corrosion is written in CMake under MIT. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, corrosion 10%. esbuild 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 | corrosion | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | CMake |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-05-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 150 |
| 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 corrosion if
- You want the corrosion feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches CMake
- You evaluated both and corrosion 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 corrosion
Corrosion is an MIT licensed CMake package that imports Rust executables, static libraries, and dynamic libraries into an existing CMake build from a Cargo workspace or package manifest, and it is aimed at C and C++ teams that already build with CMake and want to add Rust code without replacing their build system.
read the full corrosion overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or corrosion more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and corrosion has 1,498. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and corrosion free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and corrosion under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and corrosion?
esbuild is written in Go and corrosion in CMake. 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 corrosion?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,063 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose corrosion if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.