head to head · open source
esbuild vs mill
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. mill has 2,793 stars, 447 forks, 272 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 1,334% (40,063 vs 2,793 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; mill is written in Scala under MIT. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, mill 16%. mill 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 | mill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 447 |
| 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 mill if
- You want the mill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and mill 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 mill
Mill build tool. Java Scala Kotlin projects. Lives in JVM ecosystem. Category Developer Tools / Build & Deployment. License MIT. Language Scala. Homepage mill build.org. Stable version 1.1.9. Maven Central artifact com.lihaoyi/mill dist shown. Badge shows stable version and unstable dev version. Repo age 9 years. Last push 2026 09 14T12:22:46Z. Stars 2791. Forks 447. Open issues 272. Contributors not listed. GitHub description repeats tagline. README links current documentation site. README includes quick example.
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or mill more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and mill has 2,793. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and mill free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and mill under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and mill?
esbuild is written in Go and mill in Scala. 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 mill?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,063 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mill if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.