head to head · open source
esbuild vs gradle
esbuild has 40,122 GitHub stars, 1,367 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. gradle has 18,913 stars, 5,265 forks, 3,494 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 112% (40,122 vs 18,913 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; gradle is written in Groovy under Apache-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, gradle 28%. gradle 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 | gradle | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 19K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Groovy |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 5.3K |
| 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 gradle if
- You want the gradle feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Groovy
- You evaluated both and gradle fits your workflow better
About esbuild
Website Getting started Documentation Plugins FAQ Why? Our current build tools for the web are 10 100x slower than they could be: The main goal of the esbuild bundler project is to bring about a new era of build tool performance, and create an easy to use modern bundler along the way. Major features: Extreme speed without needing a cache JavaScript, CSS, TypeScript, and JSX built in A straightforward API for CLI, JS, and Go Bundles ESM and CommonJS modules Bundles CSS including CSS modules Tree shaking, minification, and source maps Local server, watch mode, and plugins Check out the getting started instructions…
read the full esbuild overview →
About gradle
🐘 Gradle Build Tool Gradle is a highly scalable build automation tool designed to handle everything from large, multi project enterprise builds to quick development tasks across various languages. Gradle’s modular, performance oriented architecture seamlessly integrates with development environments, making it a go to solution for building, testing, and deploying applications on Java , Kotlin , Scala , Android , Groovy , C++ , and Swift . For a comprehensive overview, please visit the official Gradle project homepage. 🚀 Getting Started Starting with Gradle is easy with these essential resources. Follow these…
read the full gradle overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or gradle more popular?
esbuild has 40,122 GitHub stars and gradle has 18,913. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and gradle free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and gradle under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and gradle?
esbuild is written in Go and gradle in Groovy. 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 gradle?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,122 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gradle if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.