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esbuild VS Babel

Compare esbuild VS Babel and see what are their differences

esbuild logo esbuild

An extremely fast JavaScript bundler and minifier

Babel logo Babel

Babel is a compiler for writing next generation JavaScript.
  • esbuild Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-05-07
  • Babel Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-02

esbuild videos

ESBuild and SWC: Worth your time?

More videos:

  • Review - Let's talk about esbuild
  • Tutorial - Introduction to ESBuild tutorial for React / JavaScript and Typescript bundling. Bye bye Webpack

Babel videos

Babel - Movie Review

More videos:

  • Review - Day 16 | Babel Review | 365 Films
  • Review - Worth The Hype? - BABEL Review
  • Review - Book CommuniTEA: Is BABEL a rac1st mani!fest0? [you should know the answer]
  • Review - Babel is a Masterpiece, And Here's Why

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to esbuild and Babel)
JS Build Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Development Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Javascript UI Libraries

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Babel might be a bit more popular than esbuild. We know about 134 links to it since March 2021 and only 121 links to esbuild. 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.

esbuild mentions (121)

  • How and why do we bundle zx?
    At first we wanted to just get rid of all the helper utilities. Keep only the kernel, but this would mean a loss of backward compatibility. We needed some efficient code processing instead with recomposition and tree-shaking. We needed a bundler. But which one? Our testing approach relies on targets, not sources. We rebuilt the project frequently, speed was critical requirement. In essence, we chose a solution... - Source: dev.to / 11 days ago
  • Use Notion as your CMS along with Next.js
    During my search for deploying Lambdas via GitHub actions, I came across a tutorial that utilized ncc for converting TypeScript and bundling. While ncc is effective, I discovered esbuild, which proved to be significantly faster and perfectly suited to my requirements. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • ⏰ It’s time to talk about Import Map, Micro Frontend, and Nx Monorepo
    The advent of esbuild, the native support for ES Modules in browsers, the widespread adoption of import map, the emergence of tools like Native Federation, and the Nx ecosystem all combine to forge a flexible and well-maintained Micro Frontend Architecture. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • JS Toolbox 2024: Essential Picks for Modern Developers Series Overview
    In part 3 We jump into the world of bundlers, comparing webpack, esbuild, vite, and parcel 2. This section aims to guide developers through each bundler, focusing on their performance, compatibility, and ease of use. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Build a Vite 5 backend integration with Flask
    Unlike Webpack, the Vite DevServer only compiles files when they are requested. It leverages ES module imports, which allow JS files to import other files without needing to bundle them together during development. When one file changes, only that file needs to be re-compiled, and the rest can remain unchanged. Project files are compiled with Rollup.js. Third-party dependencies in node_modules are pre-compiled... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
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Babel mentions (134)

  • How, and why, you should add JavaScript linting to your project. With ESLint and Gulp
    Some of the most popular JavaScript linting tools are ESLint, JSHint, JSLint and JSCS. We're going to be using ESLint. It’s very flexible, easy to use and has the best ES6 support, which will be helpful if we introduce more modern JavaScript (that will be transpiled for older browsers using https://babeljs.io/). All rules for ESLint can be found here: https://eslint.org/docs/rules/. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • What is Server Side Rendering (SSR) and Static Site Generation (SSG)?
    This simply extends the existing build process that many front-end frameworks have. After Babel's done with its transpilation, it merely executes code to compile your initial screen into static HTML and CSS. This isn't entirely dissimilar from how SSR hydrates your initial screen, but it's done at compile-time, not at request time. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Storybook 8 Beta
    First, we switched the default compiler for new projects from Babel to SWC (Speedy Web Compiler). SWC is dramatically faster than Babel and requires zero configuration. We’ll continue to support Babel in any project currently using it. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Nuxt vs Next: Which JavaScript Framework Suits Your Next Project?
    Nuxt.js is an open-source JavaScript framework built on Vue.js, Node.js, Vite, and Babel.js used for creating fast, cutting-edge applications. Nuxt.js possesses similar features to Next.js, with the major difference being the web framework it is compatible with. Next.js is a React framework whereas Nuxt.js is a Vue framework. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Abstract Syntax Trees and Practical Applications in JavaScript
    Disclaimer: If you've already developed Babel or ESLint plugins, this article may not be as beneficial for you, as you're likely already familiar with the majority of the content covered here. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing esbuild and Babel, you can also consider the following products

Vite - Next Generation Frontend Tooling

jQuery - The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

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.

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

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

Composer - Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP.