head to head · open source
esbuild vs trunk
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. trunk has 4,393 stars, 322 forks, 136 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 812% (40,063 vs 4,393 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; trunk is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, trunk 7%. trunk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (bundler, compiler), 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 | trunk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 322 |
| 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 trunk if
- You want the trunk 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 trunk 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 trunk
Trunk is a build and bundling tool for Rust applications that target WebAssembly for the web. It lives in the Rust and WebAssembly ecosystem, and the README describes it as a WASM web application bundler for Rust. The project uses a source HTML file as the entry point for building and bundling WASM, JavaScript snippets, and assets such as images, CSS, SCSS, and HTML.
read the full trunk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or trunk more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and trunk has 4,393. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and trunk free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and trunk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and trunk?
esbuild is written in Go and trunk 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 trunk?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,063 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose trunk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.