head to head · open source
esbuild vs haskell.nix
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. haskell.nix has 631 stars, 265 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped today. esbuild leads on adoption by 6,249% (40,063 vs 631 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 42%. 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 | ★ 631 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Nix |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 265 |
| 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
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 haskell.nix
haskell.nix is alternative Haskell infrastructure for Nixpkgs that automatically translates a Cabal or Stack project and its dependencies into Nix code, aimed at Haskell developers and Nix packagers who need reproducible, cacheable builds across many compilers and platforms.
read the full haskell.nix overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or haskell.nix more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and haskell.nix has 631. 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 (40,063 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.