head to head · open source
esbuild vs Rivet
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Rivet has 6,572 stars, 300 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 510% (40,120 vs 6,572 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; Rivet is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Rivet 5%. Rivet 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 | Rivet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 300 |
| 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 Rivet if
- You want the Rivet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Rivet 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 Rivet
Rivet Actors are the primitive for stateful workloads. Built for AI agents, collaborative apps, and durable execution. Quickstart • Documentation • Changelog • Discord • X What is Rivet? Rivet Actors are long running, lightweight processes designed for stateful workloads. State lives in memory with automatic persistence. Create one per agent, per session, or per user — with built in workflows, queues, and scheduling. Backend Client (frontend or backend) Features One Actor per agent, per session, per user — state, storage, and networking included. Rivet provides: In memory state — Co located with compute for…
read the full Rivet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or Rivet more popular?
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars and Rivet has 6,572. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and Rivet free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and Rivet under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and Rivet?
esbuild is written in Go and Rivet in Rust. 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 Rivet?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,120 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Rivet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.