head to head · open source
esbuild vs rspack
esbuild has 40,061 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. rspack has 12,910 stars, 854 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 210% (40,061 vs 12,910 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; rspack is written in Rust under MIT. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, rspack 7%. rspack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 6 topic tags (bundler, compiler, esm, javascript), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | rspack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 854 |
| 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 rspack if
- You want the rspack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and rspack 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 rspack
Rspack is a fast bundler for the web written in Rust, distributed under the MIT license. It modernizes the webpack API so that webpack configurations can be replaced seamlessly, while the Rust core delivers fast build speeds. The project lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript build tooling ecosystem, and it is part of Rstack, a unified JavaScript toolchain that also includes Rsbuild, Rslib, Rspress, Rsdoctor, Rstest, and Rslint. The repository carries the topics build tool, bundler, compiler, esm, javascript, jsx, loaders, module bundler, rspack, rstack, rust, and typescript.
read the full rspack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or rspack more popular?
esbuild has 40,061 GitHub stars and rspack has 12,910. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and rspack free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and rspack under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and rspack?
esbuild is written in Go and rspack 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 rspack?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,061 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rspack if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.