electron-builder vs electron-packager

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-packager bundles Electron app source code with a renamed Electron executable and supporting files into folders ready for distribution. It works as a command-line tool or a Node.js library called through JavaScript. Packager can find or download a matching Electron release and build for a selected platform and architecture, all valid combinations, or the host combination. Output targets include Windows, macOS—including Mac App Store targets—and Linux; these are also the listed host platforms. Documented target architectures include x86, x86_64, arm64, universal macOS, Linux armv7l, and Linux mips64el, though some depend on Electron versions. CLI options include a regular-expression ignore filter for files and folders. Electron Forge uses Packager internally, and installer tools can use its output folders to create distributables. The free, open-source Node.js tool requires Node.js 22.12.0 or higher, and local installation is recommended. Signing a macOS or Mac App Store bundle requires building on a macOS host. The project also notes that even a minimal zipped app is approximately the size of the matching zipped Electron binary.