head to head · open source
esbuild vs Harness
esbuild has 40,122 GitHub stars, 1,367 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Harness has 38,798 stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 3% (40,122 vs 38,798 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Harness 9%. Harness 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 | Harness | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 39K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| 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 Harness if
- You want the Harness feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Harness 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 Harness
Harness Harness Open Source is an open source development platform packed with the power of code hosting, automated DevOps pipelines, hosted development environments (Gitspaces), and artifact registries. Overview Harness Open source is an open source development platform packed with the power of code hosting, automated DevOps pipelines, Gitspaces, and artifact registries. Running Harness locally The latest publicly released docker image can be found on harness/harness. To install Harness yourself, simply run the command below. Once the container is up, you can visit in your browser. The Harness image uses a…
read the full Harness overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or Harness more popular?
esbuild has 40,122 GitHub stars and Harness has 38,798. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and Harness free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and Harness under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and Harness?
esbuild is written in Go and Harness 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 Harness?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,122 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Harness if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.