head to head · open source
Harness vs rspack
Harness has 38,378 GitHub stars, 3,397 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. rspack has 12,906 stars, 854 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harness leads on adoption by 197% (38,378 vs 12,906 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; rspack is written in Rust under MIT. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, rspack 7%. rspack 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
| Harness | rspack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 854 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harness if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 Harness
Harness Open Source is an Apache 2.0, Go based developer platform that combines Git source control management, CI/CD pipelines, Gitspaces hosted development environments and artifact registries into one self hostable system for engineering teams that want end to end software delivery without stitching four separate products together.
read the full Harness overview →
About rspack
Rspack is a fast bundler for the web written in Rust, distributed under the MIT license. It modernizes the webpack API so that webpack configurations can be replaced seamlessly, while the Rust core delivers fast build speeds. The project lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript build tooling ecosystem, and it is part of Rstack, a unified JavaScript toolchain that also includes Rsbuild, Rslib, Rspress, Rsdoctor, Rstest, and Rslint. The repository carries the topics build tool, bundler, compiler, esm, javascript, jsx, loaders, module bundler, rspack, rstack, rust, and typescript.
read the full rspack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or rspack more popular?
Harness has 38,378 GitHub stars and rspack has 12,906. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and rspack free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rspack under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and rspack?
Harness is written in Go 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, Harness or rspack?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,378 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rspack if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.