Vite vs webpack vs esbuild
A side-by-side look at how actively Vite, webpack and esbuild are developed on GitHub — popularity, contributor base, commit activity and how quickly issues and pull requests move.
What the numbers say
- Vite is the most-starred of the 3, with 83k stars — about 2.1× esbuild's 40k.
- Over the 52 weeks to the snapshot, webpack recorded the most commits (1.6k), against 157 for esbuild.
- webpack has closed or merged the most pull requests in its lifetime: 9.8k.
- Relative to its popularity, webpack carries the lightest open-issue load: 0.8 open issues per 1,000 stars, versus 13.8 for esbuild.
- esbuild had gone 51 days without a push at the time of the snapshot.
Head-to-head
Snapshot taken 30 September 2026.
| Metric | Vite Active | webpack Active | esbuild Slowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 83k | 66k | 40k |
| Forks | 8.8k | 9.5k | 1.4k |
| Contributors | 1.4k | 993 | 130 |
| Commits, last 52 weeks | 1.2k | 1.6k | 157 |
| Open issues | 499 | 51 | 551 |
| Open pull requests | 277 | 72 | 72 |
| Closed / merged PRs | 8.9k | 9.8k | 468 |
| Watchers | 551 | 1.5k | 269 |
| Last push | 30 Sep 2026 | 30 Sep 2026 | 9 Aug 2026 |
| Latest release | v8.3.1 (Sep 2026) | v5.111.1 (Sep 2026) | v0.28.2 (Aug 2026) |
| Main language | TypeScript | JavaScript | Go |
| Licence | MIT | MIT | MIT |
| Created | Apr 2020 | Mar 2012 | Jun 2016 |
Bold marks the highest value in a row. “Active / Slowing / Dormant” is a simple heuristic from how recently code was pushed and open issues per star — a starting point, not a verdict. Stars measure popularity, not quality.
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