head to head · open source
esbuild vs xc
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. xc has 1,413 stars, 37 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. esbuild leads on adoption by 2,739% (40,120 vs 1,413 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; xc is written in Go under MIT. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, xc 3%. xc 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 | xc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 37 |
| 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 xc if
- You want the xc feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and xc 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 xc
xc Simple, Convenient, Docs based task runner. Docs Getting Started GitHub xc is a task runner similar to Make or npm run , that aims to be more discoverable and approachable. The problem xc is intended to solve is scripts maintained separately from their documentation. Often a Makefile or a package.json will contain some useful scripts for developing on a project, then the README.md will surface and describe these scripts. In such a case, since the documentation is separate, it may not be updated when scripts are changed or added. xc aims to solve this by defining the scripts inline with the documentation. xc…
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or xc more popular?
esbuild has 40,120 GitHub stars and xc has 1,413. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and xc free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and xc under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and xc?
esbuild is written in Go and xc 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 xc?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,120 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose xc if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.