electron-builder vs Electron Forge

electron-builder is a free, open-source tool for packaging Electron apps for distribution on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It creates installers, portable builds, and archives, with targets ranging from DMG, PKG, AppImage, and DEB to NSIS, MSI, ZIP, and other formats. Command-line packaging and silent installation are supported. The electron-updater package provides differential updates, staged rollouts, and documented providers including GitHub Releases, Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, Cloudflare R2, Keygen, and generic HTTP(S) servers. Update manifests may be signed with Ed25519 and checked against a public key embedded in the app. Configured credentials enable macOS notarization and Windows Authenticode signing; ASAR integrity hashes are enabled by default, and Electron Fuses can disable selected features at package time. GitHub Actions guidance covers CI/CD builds and publishing. In v27, publishing must be explicitly requested. One build constraint matters: macOS signing requires macOS, and native dependencies generally need compilation on the target platform unless prebuilt binaries are used.

Electron Forge is a free, open-source tool for packaging and distributing Electron applications on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its build pipeline brings together code signing, installer creation, and artifact publishing. Makers generate platform-specific distributables, including Squirrel.Windows, ZIP, DEB, RPM, DMG, AppX, and Flatpak formats. Publishers can send outputs from the make command to distribution services, update servers, or storage such as an S3 bucket. Developers can initialize projects with create-electron-app and choose first-party Webpack, Webpack with TypeScript, Vite, or Vite with TypeScript templates. The Plugin API supports custom build logic, and custom Makers and Publishers can address additional build or storage targets. The GitHub Publisher supports GitHub Releases and, with host configuration, GitHub Enterprise. Documented auto-update options include a free Electron team service for open-source GitHub apps, static storage publishers, and a hosted update server; macOS auto-updates require a signed app. Getting started requires Node.js 16.4.0 or later, Git, and a JavaScript package manager. Packaging requires node_modules on disk and does not account for symlinked dependencies or Yarn Plug'n'Play.