SWC
Ranked 3 of 5 JavaScript compilers by recommenders
People recommend it as a fast JavaScript compiler, often many times quicker than Babel. The one caveat raised is that its bundler is deprecated.
People recommend it as a fast JavaScript compiler, often many times quicker than Babel. The one caveat raised is that its bundler is deprecated.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 89%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 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
“We switched a CI pipeline from babel to SWC last year and got roughly 8x improvement”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler” “this swc for example is 80x faster then babeljs”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “We rewrote our Rust WASM Parser in TypeScript – and it got 3x Faster” “but there it's way faster then babel”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “We rewrote our Rust WASM Parser in TypeScript – and it got 3x Faster” Fast built-in transforms
“The fact that swc, esbuild, etc. come batteries-included with transforms”
Comment from 10 Jan 2026 in “The Performance Revolution in JavaScript Tooling” “with tools like `swc` for type stripping, it's pretty snappy too”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “JSDoc is TypeScript”
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oxc | 14 | 6 | 70% | 9 | — | Approved |
| React Compiler | 10 | 6 | 63% | 7 | — | — |
| SWCThis page | 8 | 1 | 89% | 6 | — | — |
| Google Closure Compiler | 6 | 2 | 75% | 5 | — | — |
| Babel | 5 | 14 | 26% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“"fortunately" we can load swc compiled to wasm to deal with that”
“Not sure how that relates to Claude Code.”
“but there it's way faster then babel”
“this swc for example is 80x faster then babeljs”
“its bundler is depreciated”
“We switched a CI pipeline from babel to SWC last year and got roughly 8x improvement”
“SWC has been our default for years.”
“The fact that swc, esbuild, etc. come batteries-included with transforms”
“with tools like `swc` for type stripping, it's pretty snappy too”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.