head to head · open source
esbuild vs xmake
esbuild has 40,061 GitHub stars, 1,346 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. xmake has 12,222 stars, 954 forks, 255 open issues and last shipped yesterday. esbuild leads on adoption by 228% (40,061 vs 12,222 stars). esbuild is written in Go under MIT; xmake is written in Lua under Apache-2.0. esbuild has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, xmake 8%. xmake 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 | xmake | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-08-09 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 954 |
| 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 xmake if
- You want the xmake feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and xmake 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 xmake
Xmake is a cross platform build utility and package manager, written in Lua and licensed under Apache 2.0, that takes a single xmake.lua project file and turns it into builds for desktop, mobile, BSD, Wasm and other targets — it is aimed at C, C++, Objective C and mixed toolchain developers who want Make/Ninja style building, CMake/Meson style project generation, and Vcpkg/Conan style dependency handling from one tool.
read the full xmake overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is esbuild or xmake more popular?
esbuild has 40,061 GitHub stars and xmake has 12,222. esbuild has the larger community by that measure.
Are esbuild and xmake free?
Both are open source. esbuild is licensed under MIT and xmake under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between esbuild and xmake?
esbuild is written in Go and xmake in Lua. 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 xmake?
Choose esbuild if you want the larger community (40,061 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose xmake if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.