head to head · open source
gradle vs rspack
gradle has 18,913 GitHub stars, 5,265 forks, 3,494 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rspack has 12,970 stars, 879 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gradle leads on adoption by 46% (18,913 vs 12,970 stars). gradle is written in Groovy under Apache-2.0; rspack is written in Rust under MIT. gradle has attracted 28% as many forks as stars, rspack 7%. gradle was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (build-tool), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| gradle | rspack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Groovy | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 879 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gradle if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Groovy
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rspack if
- You want the rspack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and rspack fits your workflow better
About gradle
🐘 Gradle Build Tool Gradle is a highly scalable build automation tool designed to handle everything from large, multi project enterprise builds to quick development tasks across various languages. Gradle’s modular, performance oriented architecture seamlessly integrates with development environments, making it a go to solution for building, testing, and deploying applications on Java , Kotlin , Scala , Android , Groovy , C++ , and Swift . For a comprehensive overview, please visit the official Gradle project homepage. 🚀 Getting Started Starting with Gradle is easy with these essential resources. Follow these…
read the full gradle overview →
About rspack
Rspack English 简体中文 Rspack is a fast Rust based bundler for the web. It modernizes the webpack API to enable seamless replacement of webpack while delivering lightning fast build speeds. ✨ Features 🚀 Fast Startup : Based on Rust, the build speed is extremely fast, bringing you the ultimate development experience. ⚡ Lightning HMR : With a built in incremental compilation mechanism, HMR is extremely fast and fully capable of developing large scale projects. 📦 Webpack Compatible : Compatible with plugins and loaders in the webpack ecosystem, seamlessly integrating excellent libraries built by the community. 🎨…
read the full rspack overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More Build & Deployment projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Build & Deployment field.
Frequently asked questions
Is gradle or rspack more popular?
gradle has 18,913 GitHub stars and rspack has 12,970. gradle has the larger community by that measure.
Are gradle and rspack free?
Both are open source. gradle is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rspack under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gradle and rspack?
gradle is written in Groovy and rspack 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, gradle or rspack?
Choose gradle if you want the larger community (18,913 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rspack if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.