head to head · open source
esbuild vs proguard
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. proguard has 3,664 stars, 485 forks, 176 open issues and last shipped 27 days ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 993% (40,063 vs 3,664 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; proguard is written in Java under GPL-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, proguard 13%. proguard 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 | proguard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 485 |
| 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 proguard if
- You want the proguard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and proguard 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 proguard
ProGuard is a free Java bytecode tool that shrinks, optimizes, obfuscates, and preverifies compiled Java applications and libraries. It lives in the Java and Android build ecosystem as a post compiler step, not as a source compiler or runtime dependency. The problem it solves is that Java bytecode often contains classes, fields, methods, attributes, and instructions that a specific application does not need. ProGuard removes unused parts, renames remaining program elements with short meaningless names, and applies optimizations such as method inlining, constant propagation, unused parameter removal, and identifie…
read the full proguard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or proguard more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and proguard has 3,664. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and proguard free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and proguard under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and proguard?
esbuild is written in Go and proguard in Java. 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 proguard?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,063 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose proguard if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.