Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Handlebars VS Mustache.js

Compare Handlebars VS Mustache.js and see what are their differences

Handlebars logo Handlebars

Handlebars is a JavaScript template library that is, more or less, based on ...

Mustache.js logo Mustache.js

Minimal templating with {{mustaches}} in JavaScript - janl/mustache.js
  • Handlebars Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-28
  • Mustache.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-22

Handlebars features and specs

  • Simplicity
    Handlebars provides a straightforward and easy-to-learn syntax for templating, making it accessible for developers with varying levels of experience.
  • Logic-less Templates
    Encourages the separation of logic and design by only allowing minimal logic in templates. This promotes a cleaner code base and separation of concerns.
  • Extensibility
    Handlebars allows for custom helpers and partials which enable extending the templating functionality as needed.
  • Precompilation
    Templates can be precompiled, improving performance by reducing client-side parsing and rendering time.
  • Wide Adoption and Community Support
    As a popular templating engine, Handlebars has a large community of users and contributors, which provides abundant resources, plugins, and support.

Possible disadvantages of Handlebars

  • Limited Logic
    The logic-less nature of Handlebars means it supports only very basic conditionals and loops, which can be limiting for complex scenarios.
  • Verbosity
    Handlebars templates can become verbose, especially when using custom helpers or partials extensively.
  • Initial Learning Curve
    For developers coming from more logic-oriented templating engines, adjusting to Handlebars' logic-less paradigm can take some effort.
  • Dependency Management
    In larger projects, managing dependencies between templates, partials, and helpers can become complex and cumbersome.
  • Lack of Reactivity
    Handlebars does not include built-in support for data reactivity, making it less suitable for dynamic, real-time updates compared to modern frameworks like React or Vue.

Mustache.js features and specs

  • Logic-less Templates
    Mustache.js enforces a logic-less approach to templating, which helps in maintaining separation of concerns by ensuring that templates only concern themselves with presentation and not business logic.
  • Cross-platform Support
    Mustache.js is a JavaScript implementation of the Mustache templating language, which is supported across multiple platforms and languages, making it highly versatile and easy to integrate with various projects.
  • Lightweight
    Mustache.js is a lightweight library with a small footprint, which leads to faster loading times and reduced performance overhead compared to heavier templating engines.
  • Easy to Learn
    The syntax of Mustache is minimalistic and resembles regular HTML, making it easy to learn and adopt, especially for developers familiar with HTML.
  • Prevents Complexity
    By being logic-less, Mustache.js discourages embedding complex logic in templates, which can lead to cleaner and more maintainable codebases.

Possible disadvantages of Mustache.js

  • Limited Logic Handling
    While the logic-less nature of Mustache.js encourages separation of concerns, it can be limiting for developers who need to embed complex logic in their templates, requiring workarounds or supplementary handling in JavaScript.
  • Performance Issues with Large Data
    Mustache.js may encounter performance bottlenecks when rendering large data sets, as the library processes templates and data at runtime.
  • No Built-in Helpers
    Unlike some other templating engines, Mustache.js does not support helpers or custom logic extensions, which can make common tasks cumbersome or require additional code.
  • Lack of Advanced Features
    Mustache.js lacks some advanced features found in other templating engines, such as conditionals and loops within templates, which can limit its functionality for complex applications.
  • Dependency on External Logic
    Because Mustache.js relies heavily on external data processing, it may lead to scattered business logic across the application that might be difficult to manage as the project grows.

Handlebars videos

MTB Handlebars: Our Top 5 Picks for 2018!

More videos:

  • Review - Roland Sands Handlebars Review at RevZilla.com
  • Review - KST Kustoms Handlebars Review

Mustache.js videos

Getting started with Mustache.js

More videos:

  • Tutorial - JavaScript and JSON tutorial: JavaScript templating with mustache.js | lynda.com

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Handlebars and Mustache.js)
Javascript UI Libraries
74 74%
26% 26
Development
68 68%
32% 32
Tool
100 100%
0% 0
Frontend Development
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Handlebars should be more popular than Mustache.js. It has been mentiond 65 times since March 2021. 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.

Handlebars mentions (65)

  • Chapter 7: HTML part two
    For a more robust approach, we'd probably need to install a templating language of some kind, such as Twig, EJS, Handlebars, Pug or Mustache (this is not a complete list!). Reading the documentation for posthtml-modules, you'll notice it doesn't mention package.json or any of the approaches we've used in this guide. Instead, the examples are in JavaScript and we've advised to add this to our Node application. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How to send emails using Express and NodeJS
    As suggested by a teammate, I found out that I'll need to create the template in a different file and then replace the variables in it using some utility. So, again after searching for some packages, I figured that Handlebars would be the best solution for our problem. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • The Features of Front-end UI Components
    In dynamic web pages, especially when using template engines such as Mustache and Handlebars or libraries/frameworks such as React and Vue, the final content structure is basically generated by JS, which strengthens JS and weakens the control of HTML over the content structure. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Make Custom Handlebar Helpers in Ghost!
    In this variable, we have the response from the Ghost instance as the full HTML of the page. Imagine that this response is the homepage of your Ghost instance. The HTML content will also include our plain text {{hello_world}}, which is displayed as plain text. If our custom helper is in this form, we can compile it using Handlebars.js (https://handlebarsjs.com/) in our middleware. Remember to install the library... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • htmx and ExpressJS
    It is a novel experience to say the least for me. I mean yes I have been using Handlebars, pug, and other templating engines but this is novel in how it changed my perspective about HTML (Just read their motivation in htmx.org). - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
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Mustache.js mentions (12)

  • Documenting my pin collection with Segment Anything: Part 3
    Mustache.js: This is a templating engine used for rendering templates on the web. In your application, Mustache.js is used to dynamically create HTML forms based on the data received from the server, such as image cutouts and identifiers. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • NakedJSX - Use JSX without React
    JSX just a templating language in this case, right? No reactivity at all? What's the benefit against using something like https://github.com/janl/mustache.js/ ? Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Im not sure if im asking the right question here, but how do you create separate pages on a website?
    Nonetheless, I made ridiculous simple MRE(minimal reproducible example) for you: Https://codesandbox.io/s/distracted-gauss-gqfiue You might quickly realize the annoyance of html as strings, move to some template then, e.g: https://handlebarsjs.com/guide/ Also this example uses a library for the routing matching. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Managing application cache with react-query, and code generation.
    Mustache.js is a template engine for creating js templates. Cosmiconfig is a tool to make it convenient to work with the configuration. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • After an eternity, java.com has updated its homepage
    For a small page like that, they are using Oracle content management, knockoutjs, RedwoodJs, MarkedJs, MustacheJs, JQuery and Bootstrap. There's like 10+ layers or div, header and nav elements just to display the logo. They can't even properly anchor the footer at the bottom... Source: almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Handlebars and Mustache.js, you can also consider the following products

EJS - An open source JavaScript Template library.

Jinja2 - Jinja2 is a template engine written in Python.

Vash - Vash is a template engine that offers a swift flow between code and content using Razor Syntax

Pug - Pug is a robust, elegant, feature rich template engine for Node.js

FLAVE - Flave was created to bring ASP.

jquery-template - A template plugin for jQuery. Allows templating without cluttering JavaScript code with markup.