Rsbuild vs SWC

Rsbuild is a web-based build tool for web applications, powered by Rspack. It can create projects with no required configuration or through a configurable build API. Rspack handles bundling by default, while SWC transforms and minifies JavaScript and TypeScript. Framework plugins cover React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, and Preact. Development mode enables hot module replacement by default, and production builds enable JavaScript and CSS minification. Optional styling integrations include Tailwind CSS, UnoCSS, Sass, Less, and Stylus. Rsbuild works with most webpack plugins and all Rspack plugins, and provides first-class Module Federation support for micro-frontend applications. It also lists code splitting, tree shaking, source maps, TypeScript support, and a plugin API. The software is free and open source under the MIT license, runs on the web, and provides a StackBlitz example and Discord community. Rsbuild v2 requires Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+; v1 requires Node.js 18.12.0 or higher.

SWC is a free, extensible Rust-based platform for tools that compile and bundle JavaScript and TypeScript. It transforms modern JavaScript and TypeScript into code intended for major browsers, and supports minification, WebAssembly transforms, and custom plugins. Its core API parses ECMAScript, TypeScript, and Flow syntax; the documentation describes that API as mainly useful to build-tool authors. Integrations include webpack, Rspack, and Jest, while Next.js, Parcel, and Deno are among the tools named as users. A WebAssembly module can transform code synchronously inside a browser. SWC can be installed as prebuilt binaries or built from source, with packages documented for npm, Yarn, pnpm, Bun, and Deno. The site states that it is 20x faster than Babel on one thread and 70x faster on four cores. The bundling documentation says that feature will be dropped in v2 and recommends SWC-based bundlers instead. It also warns that its polyfill usage mode is less efficient than Babel for certain dynamically computed property expressions.