head to head · open source
esbuild vs swiftwave
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. swiftwave has 910 stars, 65 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 4,309% (40,120 vs 910 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 | ★ 910 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 65 |
| 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
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 swiftwave
SwiftWave is a self hosted, lightweight PaaS solution for easily deploying and managing your applications on any server 🚀. It's an open source alternative to Heroku, Netlify, and Render. You can install swiftwave in bare metal, Raspberry Pi, in any VPS(Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS, GCP etc.). Swiftwave and its dependencies are compatible with AMD64, ARM64 and ARMv7 architectures and compatible with Debian/Ubuntu/Raspbian OS/Fedora/CentOS/AlmaLinux/RockyLinux etc. Checkout swiftwave.org to explore more Why Swiftwave ? If you like to know why Swiftwave created and what is special in it, check this…
read the full swiftwave overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or swiftwave more popular?
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars and swiftwave has 910. 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 (40,120 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose swiftwave if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.