head to head · open source
webpack vs captain
webpack has 65,978 GitHub stars, 9,619 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. captain has 775 stars, 48 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. webpack leads on adoption by 8,413% (65,978 vs 775 stars). webpack is written in JavaScript under MIT; captain is written in Go under MIT. webpack has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, captain 6%. webpack 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
| webpack | captain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 775 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.6K | ⑂ 48 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick webpack if
- You weight community size — 66K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick captain if
- You want the captain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and captain fits your workflow better
About webpack
[![npm][npm]][npm url] [![node][node]][node url] [![builds1][builds1]][builds1 url] [![dependency review][dependency review]][dependency review url] [![coverage][cover]][cover url] [![PR's welcome][prs]][prs url] webpack Webpack is a module bundler. Its main purpose is to bundle JavaScript files for usage in a browser, yet it is also capable of transforming, bundling, or packaging just about any resource or asset. Table of Contents Install Introduction Concepts Contributing Support Current project members TSC (Technical Steering Committee) Core Collaborators Sponsoring Premium Partners Gold Sponsors Silver…
read the full webpack overview →
About captain
Introduction Captain Convert your Git workflow to Docker containers ready for Continuous Delivery Define your workflow in the captain.yaml and use captain to your Continuous Delivery service to create containers for each commit, test them and push them to your registry only when tests passes. Use captain build to build your Dockerfile(s) of your repository. If your repository has local changes the containers will only be tagged as latest , otherwise the containers will be tagged as latest , COMMIT ID & BRANCH NAME . Now your Git commit tree is reproduced in your local docker repository. Use captain test to run…
read the full captain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is webpack or captain more popular?
webpack has 65,978 GitHub stars and captain has 775. webpack has the larger community by that measure.
Are webpack and captain free?
Both are open source. webpack is licensed under MIT and captain under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between webpack and captain?
webpack is written in JavaScript and captain in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, webpack or captain?
Choose webpack if you want the larger community (65,978 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose captain if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.