esbuild
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 5 JavaScript bundlers by recommenders
Fast, stable bundler that people trust for builds and small tools; critics cite limited plugin support.
Fast, stable bundler that people trust for builds and small tools; critics cite limited plugin support.
37 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 31
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 84%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 31 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Very fast builds
“It only takes a few microseconds and I don't need any bundlers or tsc or anything like that.”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Why Vanilla JavaScript” “Compare Go (esbuild) to webpack (JS), its over 100x faster easily.”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler” “rebuild fast enough that it feels like hot module reloading”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “We moved Railway's front end off Next.js. Builds went from 10 minutes to under 2” - Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “Choose Boring Technology (2015)”
- Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “TypeScript 7.0 Beta (built on Go)”
Stable, trusted for years
“I went with esbuild in my last project, and have no regrets.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” “esbuild has been very stable for my projects too.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” “Esbuild is still my goto even after many years.”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare” Written in Go, embeddable
“Compare Go (esbuild) to webpack (JS), its over 100x faster easily.”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler” “esbuild can be used directly inside a Go program”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Go Away Python” “I know esbuild is golang and v fast”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “TypeScript 7.0 Beta (built on Go)” Single binary, zero dependencies
“starting with esbuild which made it possible to use a simple single-binary tool for bundling”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week” “ESBuild, which has 0 dependencies, for the build system instead of Vite”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “Someone Bought 30 WordPress Plugins and Planted a Backdoor in All of Them”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Limited plugin support
“esbuild's plugin support is limited which is why vite had to use rollup for prod build.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” “lack of plugin support is sufficient to block adoptions”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” Missing code splitting, top-level await
“esbuild still doesn’t support top-level await. And live reloading is way, way slower than HMR.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” “esbuild is still lacking code splitting”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out”
Other JavaScript bundlers people recommend
The four most recommended other JavaScript bundlers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 5 JavaScript bundlers, rankedWhat people said
38 of the 45 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it can be a good language to write tools that are perfectly sufficiently fast, like esbuild”
“with esbuild or rollup or something else designed for native ESM bundling”
“they're fast enough for me to not care”
“large parts of the original Bun source code was a line-by-line port of esbuild from Go to Zig”
“It only takes a few microseconds and I don't need any bundlers or tsc or anything like that.”
“vanilla TypeScript + golang middleware (esbuild) on the backend that converts to JS on the fly.”
“esbuild doesn't do everything for me”
“the issue in esbuild for that is still open and users are manually building their workers as separate entry points, which is very fragile”
“Same here. I prefer bet on community-led projects like Node.js, ESbuild and BiomeJS”
“Esbuild is still my goto even after many years.”
“oh I don't plan to npm anything other than something like esbuild and solidjs.”
“I know esbuild is golang and v fast”
“ESBuild, which has 0 dependencies, for the build system instead of Vite”
“rebuild fast enough that it feels like hot module reloading”
“It actually consumes quite a bit of battery”
“not even a big deal these days with tools like esbuild”
“I love single-use tools with limited scope like e.g. esbuild or now this.”
“esbuild's plugin support is limited which is why vite had to use rollup for prod build.”
“esbuild still doesn’t support top-level await. And live reloading is way, way slower than HMR.”
“esbuild is still lacking code splitting”
“I went with esbuild in my last project, and have no regrets.”
“esbuild has been very stable for my projects too.”
“I am just using esbuild directly.”
“lack of plugin support is sufficient to block adoptions”
“supports them well enough to be credible”
“starting with esbuild which made it possible to use a simple single-binary tool for bundling”
“Compare Go (esbuild) to webpack (JS), its over 100x faster easily.”
“Evan wallace proved it by building esbuild. this is no longer bet.”
“esbuild still hits minifier bugs regularily”
“requires sticking to esbuild”
“just use esbuild to target ES2020 before you run in it”
“The fact that swc, esbuild, etc. come batteries-included with transforms”
“most other bundlers (e.g. Rollup and esbuild) do not”
“You can use esbuild to build your entire project with a single command.”
“You can do it in like 50 lines of code and esbuild.”
“esbuild can be used directly inside a Go program”
“All you need is Claude and esbuild, and you can make practically anything.”
“with webapps I can just use esbuild”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.