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bundlejs VS RequireJS

Compare bundlejs VS RequireJS and see what are their differences

bundlejs logo bundlejs

A quick and easy way to bundle, minify, and compress (gzip and brotli) your ts, js, jsx and npm projects all online, with the bundle file size.

RequireJS logo RequireJS

RequireJS is a JavaScript file and module loader.
  • bundlejs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2025-09-16

bundle is a quick and easy way to bundle your projects, minify and see it's gzip size. It's an online tool similar to bundlephobia, but bundle does all the bundling locally on you browser and can treeshake and bundle multiple packages (both commonjs and esm) together, all without having to install any npm packages and with typescript support.

If there is something I missed, a mistake, or a feature you would like added please create an issue or a pull request and I'll try to get to it. You can contribute to this project at okikio/bundle.

You can join the discussion on Github discussions or Twitter.

You can now use search queries in bundle, all you need to do is add this to the url
?q={packages}&treeshake={methods to treeshake}

e.g.
You want react, react-dom, vue, and @okikio/animate, but only want the Animate and toStr methods exported from @okikio/animate.

You would add this to the url bundlejs.com/?q=react,react-dom,vue,@okikio/animate&treeshake=[*],[*],[*],[{Animate,toStr}]

  • RequireJS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-09-19

bundlejs

$ Details
free
Platforms
Web Google Chrome Firefox Safari JavaScript Edge
Release Date
2021 May

bundlejs features and specs

  • brotli
  • gzip
  • lz4
  • npm
  • deno
  • Configurable
  • jsx
  • TypeScript
  • Offline
  • Error and warning alerting
  • Open-source

RequireJS features and specs

  • Modularization
    RequireJS encourages a modular approach to development by allowing developers to define dependencies between JavaScript files. This modularization leads to cleaner code and easier maintenance.
  • Asynchronous Loading
    Scripts are loaded asynchronously, which can lead to improved performance. This non-blocking nature ensures that the web page remains responsive while scripts are still being loaded.
  • Dependency Management
    RequireJS automatically manages dependencies, ensuring that each module is loaded in the correct order. This reduces the risk of runtime errors caused by missing or incorrectly ordered scripts.
  • AMD Standard
    It implements the Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD) API, which promotes compatibility between different JavaScript libraries that conform to this standard.
  • Optimization Tools
    RequireJS includes optimization tools that can concatenate and minify JavaScript files, reducing the number of HTTP requests and file size for production environments.

Possible disadvantages of RequireJS

  • Learning Curve
    For developers not familiar with AMD or module loaders, RequireJS can introduce complexity and have a steep learning curve compared to simpler script-loading methods.
  • Not ES6 Module Compatible
    RequireJS is designed around the AMD pattern and does not natively support ES6 module syntax, which has become the standard in modern JavaScript development.
  • Overhead
    Although it offers powerful features, RequireJS introduces some initial setup and configuration overhead, which can be cumbersome for small projects or scripts.
  • Compatibility Issues
    Some older libraries or scripts might not be compatible with RequireJS without modifications, leading to potential integration issues when using certain third-party libraries.
  • Declining Popularity
    With the adoption of native ES6 modules and modern build tools like Webpack and Parcel, RequireJS is less commonly used, potentially reducing community support and resources.

Analysis of RequireJS

Overall verdict

  • RequireJS is considered a robust solution for legacy projects or for teams who started their development process before JavaScript standards evolved. However, with the introduction and adoption of native ES6 modules and tools like Webpack and Rollup, RequireJS has become less relevant for new projects. It's a good solution if you are maintaining an older codebase and need consistency, but for new projects, modern alternatives may be more appropriate.

Why this product is good

  • RequireJS is a JavaScript file and module loader designed to improve the speed and quality of your code. It has been particularly beneficial in managing dependencies and loading scripts asynchronously, which helps optimize performance by loading only the necessary modules when needed. RequireJS was a popular choice when JavaScript development environments needed a reliable way to modularize code before the widespread adoption of ES6 modules.

Recommended for

    RequireJS is recommended for projects that are already using it, especially if the project is large and refactoring to a different module system would be resource-intensive. It can also be suitable for legacy web applications that have complex dependency chains which have been built with AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition) patterns. However, newer projects are better served with modern bundlers and native ES6 module syntax.

bundlejs videos

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RequireJS videos

Optimize Your CSS With RequireJS

More videos:

  • Review - RequireJS and Magento2
  • Review - Yeoman 1.0 Backbone RequireJS - Video 2

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to bundlejs and RequireJS)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
JS Build Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Web Application Bundler
33 33%
67% 67
Compression
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

RequireJS might be a bit more popular than bundlejs. We know about 14 links to it since March 2021 and only 10 links to bundlejs. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

bundlejs mentions (10)

  • Show HN: Duper โ€“ The Format That's Super
    I think a neat route would be to use this as an authoring plugin in VS Code, like prettier: write Duper (or JSON5, or whatever), and then downlevel it to regular json automatically when pressing cmd-s. You wouldn't get to keep your comments (or they could be transformed to { "//": "comment text" }). Outside of that, it's tough to compete with JSON in the "human readable unschematized serialization format" market,... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • I Built the Same App 10 Times: Evaluating Frameworks for Mobile Performance
    React's bundling system and published packages has gotten noticeably more complicated over time. First, there's the separation between the generic cross-platform `react` package, and the platform-specific reconcilers like `react-dom` and `react-native. All the actual "React" logic is built into the reconciler packages (ie, each contains a complete copy of the actual `react-reconciler` package + all the... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Zod 4
    These numbers don't reflect anything useful. This is the total size of the code in the package, most of which will be tree-shaken. In Zod's case, the package now contains three independent sub-libraries. I recommend plugging a script into bundlejs.com[0] to see bundle size numbers for a particular script [0] https://bundlejs.com. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • PackagePhobia โ€“ Find the cost of adding a new dev dependency to your project
    [bundlejs](https://bundlejs.com/) is the better alternative to check your dependency sizes with. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • ESM & CJS: The subtle shift in bundlejs' behaviour
    I was closing out some long lived issues over on bundlejs, when issue #50 reminded me of the ongoing debate about how bundlejs should handle the ESM and CJS packages. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
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RequireJS mentions (14)

  • Advanced Beginnerโ€™s guide to ClojureScript
    That's the job of Closure Compiler. Closure is an optimizing JavaScript compiler that ClojureScript is using since its initial release, in 2011. At the time JavaScript didn't have standard module format, remember AMD, UMD, RequireJS and CommonJS? Closure folks at Google invented another one, where goog.provide declares a module and goog.require imports another module. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Everything about ESM and treeshaking
    The fact that everything was loaded synchronously, which was not really an issue at that time when writing for servers, it was not really feasible for front-ends. Therefore RequireJS was brought to live. If you ever wondered how it looks, there is an example repository still living. If you are more interested in the history, look up: AMD, UMD, RequireJS. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Why hasn't JavaScript implemented namespaces yet?
    There is a library called requirejs (https://requirejs.org/) that accomplishes what I am referring to. However, this is essentially similar to the situation in PHP prior to version 5.3 - a solution implemented at the level of a separate library rather than at the language level. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Getting Started With Parcel.js: A Web Application Bundler in 2022
    Webpack is the most popular bundler and it followed on the heels of Require.js, Rollup, and similar solutions. But the learning curve for a tool like webpack is steep. Getting started with webpack isnโ€™t easy due to its complex configurations. As a result, in recent years another solution has emerged. This tool is not necessarily a front-runner, but an easier-to-digest alternative on the front-end module bundler... - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • RequireJS: How to define modules that contain a single "class"?
    I have a number of JavaScript "classes" each implemented in its own JavaScript file. For development those files are loaded individually, and for production they are concatenated, but in both cases I have to manually define a loading order, making sure that B comes after A if B uses A. I am planning to use RequireJS as an implementation of CommonJS Modules/AsynchronousDefinition to solve this problem for me... Source: about 4 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing bundlejs and RequireJS, you can also consider the following products

esbuild - An extremely fast JavaScript bundler and minifier

rollup.js - Rollup is a module bundler for JavaScript which compiles small pieces of code into a larger piece such as application.

Webpack - Webpack is a module bundler. Its main purpose is to bundle JavaScript files for usage in a browser, yet it is also capable of transforming, bundling, or packaging just about any resource or asset.

JSHint - New JSHint website. Anton Kovalyov Oct 1st, 2013. For the last couple of weeks I've been working on a new homepage for JSHint and today I'm proud to announce the new jshint. com! JSHint Website.

BundlePhobia - Find the performance impact of adding a npm package to your bundle.

stealjs - Futuristic JavaScript dependency loader and builder. Speeds up application load times. Works with ES6, CommonJS, AMD, CSS, LESS and more. Simplifies modular workflows.