head to head · open source
esbuild vs haskell.nix
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. haskell.nix has 634 stars, 271 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 6,228% (40,120 vs 634 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; haskell.nix is written in Nix under Apache-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, haskell.nix 43%. haskell.nix 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 | haskell.nix | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 634 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Nix |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 271 |
| 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 haskell.nix if
- You want the haskell.nix feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Nix
- You evaluated both and haskell.nix 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 haskell.nix
haskell.nix is infrastructure for building Haskell packages with Nix haskell.nix can automatically translate your Cabal or Stack project and its dependencies into Nix code. Documentation Introduction Getting Started Troubleshooting Explore the documentation from there to find further topics. Help! Something isn't working The 1 problem that people have when using haskell.nix is that they find themselves building GHC. This should not happen, but you must follow the haskell.nix setup instructions properly to avoid it. If you find this happening to you, please check that you have followed the getting started…
read the full haskell.nix overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or haskell.nix more popular?
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars and haskell.nix has 634. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and haskell.nix free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and haskell.nix under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and haskell.nix?
esbuild is written in Go and haskell.nix in Nix. 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 haskell.nix?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,120 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose haskell.nix if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.