head to head · open source
esbuild vs tsuru
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. tsuru has 5,326 stars, 555 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 653% (40,120 vs 5,326 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; tsuru is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, tsuru 10%. tsuru 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 | tsuru | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-10-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 555 |
| 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 tsuru if
- You want the tsuru feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tsuru 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 tsuru
tsuru What is tsuru? tsuru is an extensible and open source Platform as a Service (PaaS) that makes application deployments faster and easier. With tsuru, you don’t need to think about servers at all. As an application developer, you can: Write apps in the programming language of your choice Back apps with add on resources such as SQL and NoSQL databases, including memcached, Redis, and many others Manage apps using the tsuru command line tool Links: Landing page: Full Documentation: How to Contribute: Repository & Issue Tracker: Talk to us on Gitter: Popular platforms supported: Python Nodejs GO Ruby PHP Perl…
read the full tsuru overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or tsuru more popular?
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars and tsuru has 5,326. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and tsuru free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and tsuru under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and tsuru?
esbuild is written in Go and tsuru 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 tsuru?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,120 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tsuru if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.