head to head · open source
turborepo vs xmake
turborepo has 31,295 GitHub stars, 2,477 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xmake has 12,286 stars, 965 forks, 255 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. turborepo leads on adoption by 155% (31,295 vs 12,286 stars). turborepo is written in Rust under MIT; xmake is written in Lua under Apache-2.0. turborepo has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, xmake 8%. turborepo 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
| turborepo | xmake | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 965 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick turborepo if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 turborepo
Turborepo Turborepo is the build system for coding agents. Getting Started Visit to get started with Turborepo. Contributing See CONTRIBUTING.md for more information. Community The Turborepo community can be found on GitHub Discussions, where you can ask questions, voice ideas, and share your projects. To chat with other community members, you can join Vercel Community's turborepo tag. Our Code of Conduct applies to all Turborepo community channels. Who is using Turborepo? Turborepo is used by the world's leading companies. Check out the Turborepo Showcase to learn more. Updates Follow @turborepo on X for…
read the full turborepo overview →
About xmake
xmake A cross platform build utility based on Lua Modern C/C++ build tool: Simple, Fast, Powerful dependency package integration Support this project Support this project by becoming a sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website. 🙏 Introduction (中文) What is Xmake? 1. Xmake is a cross platform build utility based on the Lua scripting language. 2. Xmake is very lightweight and has no dependencies outside of the standard library. 3. Uses the xmake.lua file to maintain project builds with a simple and readable syntax. Xmake can be used to directly build source code (like with Make or Ninja), or…
read the full xmake overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is turborepo or xmake more popular?
turborepo has 31,295 GitHub stars and xmake has 12,286. turborepo has the larger community by that measure.
Are turborepo and xmake free?
Both are open source. turborepo is licensed under MIT and xmake under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between turborepo and xmake?
turborepo is written in Rust 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, turborepo or xmake?
Choose turborepo if you want the larger community (31,295 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose xmake if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.