head to head · open source
esbuild vs proguard
esbuild has 40,122 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. proguard has 3,690 stars, 486 forks, 176 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 987% (40,122 vs 3,690 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 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 486 |
| 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
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 proguard
Quick Start • Features • Contributing • License ProGuard is a free shrinker, optimizer, obfuscator, and preverifier for Java bytecode: It detects and removes unused classes, fields, methods, and attributes. It optimizes bytecode and removes unused instructions. It renames the remaining classes, fields, and methods using short meaningless names. The resulting applications and libraries are smaller and faster. ❓ Getting Help Please use the issue tracker to report actual bugs 🐛, crashes , etc. 🚀 Quick Start Command line First, download the latest release from GitHub releases. To run ProGuard, on Linux/MacOS, just…
read the full proguard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or proguard more popular?
esbuild has 40,122 GitHub stars and proguard has 3,690. 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 (40,122 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose proguard if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.