Oxc
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 5 JavaScript compilers
Rust-based JavaScript tooling, including a transformer that people find much faster than Babel or SWC. Critics report it is still alpha in places and mishandles some edge cases.
Rust-based JavaScript tooling, including a transformer that people find much faster than Babel or SWC. Critics report it is still alpha in places and mishandles some edge cases.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 70%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 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
Much faster than Babel and SWC
“Tried oxc's transformer more recently on the same codebase and it shaved off another 30-40% on top of SWC”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler” “That's where I saw the biggest speedup, because developers of them decided to use a compiled language”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Anthropic acquires Bun” “OXC Transformers are amazingly faster than Babel”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “The Rust React Compiler is now native in Vite” Praised as a growing ecosystem
“the whole ecosystem around OXS looks very promising”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack” “Oxc ecosystem is still impressive.”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Friendship ended with Deno, now Node is my best friend” “I use oxc tooling and it's great”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Tsrs: A Port of TypeScript to Rust”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Missing or unfinished features
“Yes, those work fine: the playground shows constructor parameter properties and enums working, but standardized ECMAScript decorators are simply passed through as-is.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” “It doesn't support const enum”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” Odd behavior in edge cases
“I found the ox stuff to do weird things to my code when it was in weird edge case states”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler” “sometimes oxc complains about JSX in JS when running vite, but it still works fine”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Vite 8.0 Is Out” Concerns about team conduct
“This is not acceptable, and not how open source works.”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “Oxc (popular front-end tooling) forked my parser but removed my copyright notice” “I’d be very cautious in trusting this team.”
Comment from 5 Jul 2026 in “Oxc (popular front-end tooling) forked my parser but removed my copyright notice”
Other JavaScript compilers people recommend
The four most recommended other JavaScript compilers, 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.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OxcThis page | 14 | 6 | 70% | 9 | — | Approved |
| React Compiler | 10 | 6 | 63% | 7 | — | — |
| SWC | 8 | 1 | 89% | 6 | — | — |
| Google Closure Compiler | 6 | 2 | 75% | 5 | — | — |
| Babel | 5 | 14 | 26% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
19 of the 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I use oxc tooling and it's great”
“Oxc ecosystem is still impressive.”
“OXC Transformers are amazingly faster than Babel”
“This is not acceptable, and not how open source works.”
“I’d be very cautious in trusting this team.”
“They should be using Oxc tooling directly, not hanging onto JavaScript parsers”
“OXC is the best of the JS toolchains implemented in Rust”
“I tried oxc and didn't like it as much as biome.”
“sometimes oxc complains about JSX in JS when running vite, but it still works fine”
“It doesn't support const enum”
“Yes, those work fine: the playground shows constructor parameter properties and enums working, but standardized ECMAScript decorators are simply passed through as-is.”
“Tried oxc's transformer more recently on the same codebase and it shaved off another 30-40% on top of SWC”
“I found the ox stuff to do weird things to my code when it was in weird edge case states”
“Biome and oxc* never worked properly with Svelte”
“both oxfmt/oxc are in alpha”
“so one less script to run in paralell”
“There are examples where that's true, like Biome or oxc.”
“That's where I saw the biggest speedup, because developers of them decided to use a compiled language”
“the whole ecosystem around OXS looks very promising”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.