head to head · open source
esbuild vs gradle
esbuild has 40,061 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. gradle has 18,847 stars, 5,335 forks, 3,494 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 113% (40,061 vs 18,847 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 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 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
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 gradle
Gradle is an open source build automation tool distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, hosted at gradle.org and developed in the Groovy language. It is described as a highly scalable build automation tool designed to handle everything from large, multi project enterprise builds to quick development tasks across various languages. Its modular, performance oriented architecture integrates with development environments, and the project has grown over roughly seventeen years to a repository with 18,841 stars, 5,335 forks, and 3,494 open issues. It lives in the JVM tooling ecosystem, with topics covering build tool,…
read the full gradle overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or gradle more popular?
esbuild has 40,061 GitHub stars and gradle has 18,847. 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 (40,061 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gradle if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.