head to head · open source
webpack vs phing
webpack has 65,945 GitHub stars, 9,545 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped today. phing has 1,168 stars, 319 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. webpack leads on adoption by 5,546% (65,945 vs 1,168 stars). webpack is written in JavaScript under MIT; phing is written in PHP under LGPL-3.0. webpack has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, phing 27%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| webpack | phing | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.5K | ⑂ 319 |
| 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 phing if
- You want the phing feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and phing fits your workflow better
About webpack
webpack is an open source module bundler for JavaScript and related assets, distributed under the MIT license and published to npm. It lives in the JavaScript ecosystem, where the README describes its main purpose as bundling JavaScript files for use in a browser, while also being capable of transforming, bundling, or packaging just about any resource or asset. Loaders let modules arrive in many forms — CommonJS, AMD, ES6 modules, CSS, images, JSON, CoffeeScript, LESS, or custom formats — and the plugin system extends what the build can do.
read the full webpack overview →
About phing
Thank you for using PHING! PH ing I s N ot G NU make; it's a PHP project build system or build tool based on Apache Ant. You can do anything with it that you could do with a traditional build system like GNU make, and its use of simple XML build files and extensible PHP "task" classes make it an easy to use and highly flexible build framework. Features include running PHPUnit unit tests (including test result and coverage reports), file transformations (e.g. token replacement, XSLT transformation, template transformations), file system operations, interactive build support, SQL execution, SCM operations (Git, Sub…
read the full phing 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 webpack or phing more popular?
webpack has 65,945 GitHub stars and phing has 1,168. webpack has the larger community by that measure.
Are webpack and phing free?
Both are open source. webpack is licensed under MIT and phing under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between webpack and phing?
webpack is written in JavaScript and phing in PHP. 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 phing?
Choose webpack if you want the larger community (65,945 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose phing if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.