head to head · open source
esbuild vs Woodpecker CI
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Woodpecker CI has 7,896 stars, 680 forks, 371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 407% (40,063 vs 7,896 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; Woodpecker CI is written in Go under Apache-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Woodpecker CI 9%. Woodpecker CI 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 | Woodpecker CI | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 7.9K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 680 |
| 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 Woodpecker CI if
- You want the Woodpecker CI 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 Woodpecker CI 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 Woodpecker CI
Woodpecker CI is a continuous integration and continuous delivery engine written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the developer tooling ecosystem around build and deployment automation, and it is distributed as a self hostable server plus one or more agents that execute pipeline work. The project describes itself as a simple, yet powerful CI/CD engine with great extensibility, and it is catalogued under topics such as automation, ci, cicd, devops, docker, and kubernetes. Its documentation and plugin directory are hosted at woodpecker ci.org.
read the full Woodpecker CI overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or Woodpecker CI more popular?
esbuild has 40,063 GitHub stars and Woodpecker CI has 7,896. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and Woodpecker CI free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and Woodpecker CI under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and Woodpecker CI?
esbuild is written in Go and Woodpecker CI 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 Woodpecker CI?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,063 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Woodpecker CI if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.