head to head · open source
esbuild vs swiftwave
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. swiftwave has 895 stars, 67 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 4,376% (40,063 vs 895 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; swiftwave is written in Go under Apache-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, swiftwave 7%. swiftwave 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 | swiftwave | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 895 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 67 |
| 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 swiftwave if
- You want the swiftwave feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and swiftwave 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 swiftwave
Swiftwave is a self hosted, lightweight platform as a service written in Go that lets developers deploy and manage applications on their own servers, positioned as an open source alternative to Heroku, Netlify, and Render.
read the full swiftwave overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or swiftwave more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and swiftwave has 895. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and swiftwave free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and swiftwave under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and swiftwave?
esbuild is written in Go and swiftwave in Go. 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 swiftwave?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,063 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose swiftwave if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.