head to head · open source
webpack vs Rivet
webpack has 65,945 GitHub stars, 9,545 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Rivet has 6,144 stars, 249 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. webpack leads on adoption by 973% (65,945 vs 6,144 stars). webpack is written in JavaScript under MIT; Rivet is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. webpack has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, Rivet 4%. Rivet 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
| webpack | Rivet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.5K | ⑂ 249 |
| 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 Rivet if
- You want the Rivet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Rivet 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 Rivet
Rivet is an open source runtime for building stateful backends around in memory actors. It is written in Rust and released under the Apache 2.0 license, and it lives in the developer tools ecosystem for build and deployment, with topics that place it alongside Cloudflare Durable Objects, FoundationDB, serverless platforms, and realtime multiplayer infrastructure. An actor in Rivet is a long running, lightweight process that holds its state in memory while persisting that state automatically, so a developer creates one actor per agent, per session, or per user rather than managing a separate service for each.…
read the full Rivet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is webpack or Rivet more popular?
webpack has 65,945 GitHub stars and Rivet has 6,144. webpack has the larger community by that measure.
Are webpack and Rivet free?
Both are open source. webpack is licensed under MIT and Rivet under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between webpack and Rivet?
webpack is written in JavaScript and Rivet 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, webpack or Rivet?
Choose webpack if you want the larger community (65,945 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Rivet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.