Rollup VS esbuild

Compare Rollup vs esbuild and see what are their differences.

Rollup

Next-generation ES module bundler (by rollup)
Our great sponsors
  • SurveyJS - Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
Rollup esbuild
69 321
24,701 37,019
1.0% -
9.5 9.6
about 7 hours ago 10 days ago
JavaScript Go
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

Rollup

Posts with mentions or reviews of Rollup. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-08.
  • Rolldown
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Mar 2024
    Doesn't Rollup already use quite a bit of rust[0]? It's actually why I had to abandon it for a project, where they didn't offer binaries for our build platform and I needed to bundle, like 2 ES6 javascript libraries so I just grabbed esbuild instead.

    [0] https://github.com/rollup/rollup/tree/master/rust

  • Build a Vite 5 backend integration with Flask
    11 projects | dev.to | 25 Feb 2024
    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 using the ultra-fast esbuild bundler for maximum speed, and they are cached until the dependency version changes. Vite also provides a client script for hot module reloading.
  • 11 Ways to Optimize Your Website
    12 projects | dev.to | 12 Nov 2023
    Besides Webpack, there are many other popular web bundlers available, such as Parcel, Esbuild, Rollup, and more. They all have their own unique features and strengths, and you should make your decision based on the needs and requirements of your specific project. Please refer to their official websites for details.
  • Bun vs Node.js: Everything you need to know
    7 projects | dev.to | 21 Sep 2023
    In the Node.js ecosystem, bundling is typically handled by third-party tools rather than Node.js itself. Some of the most popular bundlers in the Node.js world include Webpack, Rollup, and Parcel, offering features like code splitting, tree shaking, and hot module replacement.
  • My opinionated JavaScript package template repository - zero config, start immediately
    8 projects | dev.to | 8 Aug 2023
    📦 Rollup for bundling
  • How To Secure Your JavaScript Applications
    11 projects | dev.to | 14 Jun 2023
    Bundling: Webpack, Parcel, Rollup
  • 5 Different Tools to Bundle Node.js Apps
    8 projects | dev.to | 13 Jun 2023
    Rollup is another popular JavaScript module bundler focusing on high performance. It excels at tree-shaking and uses ES module syntax to generate more performant bundles than traditional module bundlers. In addition to JavaScript, Rollup supports bundling CSS and JSON as well. Rollup has more than 12 million weekly NPM downloads.
  • How to build and publish React TypeScript NPM packages with Vite
    4 projects | dev.to | 4 Jun 2023
    Vite (read as vit) is actually a combination of two great frontend tools - an immensely fast development server and a build command for shipping heavily optimized static assets using Rollup. Many developers have encountered the process of setting up a project using Create React App. While CRA can be useful for beginners due to its simplicity and abstraction of configuration, it has some drawbacks that outweigh its benefits, particularly its tendency to be bloated. Don't get me wrong, Vite is opinionated as well, but it's highly extensible through its Plugin API.
  • Building a modern gRPC-powered microservice using Node.js, Typescript, and Connect
    15 projects | dev.to | 20 Apr 2023
    As we iterate on the definition, we are going to want a better developer experience for rebuilding the package on changes. Typically, for a “library” or “utility” style package, I’d reach for either unbuild’s stub concept or use esbuild/tsup/rollup to implement a more traditional watch/rebuild, but in this case, I’m watching a proto file that lives outsides of the source, which breaks assumptions of those tools.
  • Buildless workflow through import maps (featuring Lit, Shoelace and more)
    2 projects | dev.to | 12 Apr 2023
    As we can see, we have two external dependencies and one internal tool. In the modern way of packaging our application, we would be of course required to package this project using some bundler like ESBuild or Rollup. But with import maps, we can instead utilize CDN's to deliver our packages and completely eliminate the bundling step.

esbuild

Posts with mentions or reviews of esbuild. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-11.
  • ⏰ It’s time to talk about Import Map, Micro Frontend, and Nx Monorepo
    9 projects | dev.to | 11 Mar 2024
    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.
  • JS Toolbox 2024: Bundlers and Test Frameworks
    10 projects | dev.to | 3 Mar 2024
    EsBuild is a relatively new, blazing-fast JavaScript bundler and minifier. It stands out for its high performance, significantly speeding up the build process in development pipelines.
  • Build a Vite 5 backend integration with Flask
    11 projects | dev.to | 25 Feb 2024
    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 using the ultra-fast esbuild bundler for maximum speed, and they are cached until the dependency version changes. Vite also provides a client script for hot module reloading.
  • SSR React in Go
    9 projects | dev.to | 20 Jan 2024
    Use esbuild to build the React code into a form executable on both the server and client sides.
  • Effortless Function as a Service: A Simple Guide to Implementing it with Query
    2 projects | dev.to | 21 Dec 2023
    The functions will bundle using esbuild. For that, it is required to install esbuild globally:
  • Quick Summary of Angular 17
    3 projects | dev.to | 13 Nov 2023
    esbuild plus Vite is out of developer preview and enabled by default, yielding 67%, 87%, 80% speed improvements for build time, hybrid build time and hybrid serve time respectively.
  • In-Depth guide for TypeScript Library
    4 projects | dev.to | 13 Nov 2023
    Bundling with esbuild
  • 11 Ways to Optimize Your Website
    12 projects | dev.to | 12 Nov 2023
    Besides Webpack, there are many other popular web bundlers available, such as Parcel, Esbuild, Rollup, and more. They all have their own unique features and strengths, and you should make your decision based on the needs and requirements of your specific project. Please refer to their official websites for details.
  • WinterJS
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Oct 2023
  • Run Bun Run! Building an AWS CDK Template with Bun
    4 projects | dev.to | 28 Sep 2023
    The famous bundler is Webpack, but esbuild is the fastest one… Well, until Bun 🍔

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Rollup and esbuild you can also consider the following projects:

swc - Rust-based platform for the Web

vite - Next generation frontend tooling. It's fast!

tsup - The simplest and fastest way to bundle your TypeScript libraries.

webpack - A bundler for javascript and friends. Packs many modules into a few bundled assets. Code Splitting allows for loading parts of the application on demand. Through "loaders", modules can be CommonJs, AMD, ES6 modules, CSS, Images, JSON, Coffeescript, LESS, ... and your custom stuff.

parcel - The zero configuration build tool for the web. 📦🚀

terser - 🗜 JavaScript parser, mangler and compressor toolkit for ES6+

ts-node - TypeScript execution and REPL for node.js

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapid UI development.

import-maps - How to control the behavior of JavaScript imports