esbuild vs webpack
esbuild and webpack are two comparable projects, each with trade-offs depending on your needs. webpack is the more popular choice (65,929 vs 39,974 stars). Both are MIT-licensed.
| esbuild | webpack | |
|---|---|---|
| Summary | esbuild is a high-performance JavaScript/TypeScript/CSS bundler and minifier written in Go, designed to be 10-100x faster than traditional web build tools. It offers a unified CLI, JS, and Go API with built-in support for ESM/CommonJS, JSX, tree shaking, source maps, and plugins. | webpack is an open-source JavaScript project in the build tools space with 65.8k GitHub stars. The repository is actively maintained, with recent commits. |
| Category | Build tools | Build tools |
| Language | Go | JavaScript |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Stars | 39,974 | 65,929 |
| Downloads/wk | — | 48M |
| Security | — | 4 advisories |
| Health | 100 | 100 |
| Last commit | 6/12/2026 | 7/11/2026 |
| Source | GitHub | GitHub |