# esbuild

31 Hacker News commenters recommended esbuild and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast, stable bundler that people trust for builds and small tools; critics cite limited plugin support.

## Why people recommend it

- Very fast builds (5 comments): "It only takes a few microseconds and I don't need any bundlers or tsc or anything like that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48908778)) "Compare Go (esbuild) to webpack (JS), its over 100x faster easily." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120293)) "rebuild fast enough that it feels like hot module reloading" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698569))
- Stable, trusted for years (3 comments): "I went with esbuild in my last project, and have no regrets." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363928)) "esbuild has been very stable for my projects too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363750)) "Esbuild is still my goto even after many years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48398584))
- Written in Go, embeddable (3 comments): "Compare Go (esbuild) to webpack (JS), its over 100x faster easily." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120293)) "esbuild can be used directly inside a Go program" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46431827)) "I know esbuild is golang and v fast" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47871455))
- Single binary, zero dependencies (2 comments): "starting with esbuild which made it possible to use a simple single-binary tool for bundling" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145935)) "ESBuild, which has 0 dependencies, for the build system instead of Vite" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47756199))

## What people warn about

- Limited plugin support (2 comments): "esbuild's plugin support is limited which is why vite had to use rollup for prod build." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47364870)) "lack of plugin support is sufficient to block adoptions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362579))
- Missing code splitting, top-level await (2 comments): "esbuild still doesn’t support top-level await. And live reloading is way, way slower than HMR." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47364493)) "esbuild is still lacking code splitting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47364451))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Vite](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vite.md): 135 recommend
- [Rolldown](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rolldown.md): 13 recommend
- [webpack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/webpack.md): 13 recommend
- [Turbopack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/turbopack.md): 12 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "esbuild", https://hackerapproved.com/p/esbuild/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).