head to head · open source
gradle vs rspack
gradle has 18,847 GitHub stars, 5,335 forks, 3,494 open issues and last shipped today. rspack has 12,911 stars, 853 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped today. gradle leads on adoption by 46% (18,847 vs 12,911 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%. rspack 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.
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Side by side
| gradle | rspack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Groovy | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 853 |
| 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 is an open source build automation tool distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, hosted at gradle.org and developed in the Groovy language. It is described as a highly scalable build automation tool designed to handle everything from large, multi project enterprise builds to quick development tasks across various languages. Its modular, performance oriented architecture integrates with development environments, and the project has grown over roughly seventeen years to a repository with 18,841 stars, 5,335 forks, and 3,494 open issues. It lives in the JVM tooling ecosystem, with topics covering build tool,…
read the full gradle 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 gradle or rspack more popular?
gradle has 18,847 GitHub stars and rspack has 12,911. 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 (18,847 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rspack if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.