SWC vs webpack

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.

webpack is a free, open-source static module bundler for modern JavaScript applications. It builds a dependency graph and combines modules into bundles, with code splitting for on-demand loading. Built-in support covers JavaScript, JSON, WebAssembly, CSS and HTML. Loaders transform sources such as Sass into CSS or TypeScript into JavaScript, while plugins customize compilation through lifecycle hooks. ModuleFederationPlugin lets independently built applications share modules at runtime. Since version 4.0.0, webpack can run without a configuration file, although it remains highly configurable. Interfaces include the CLI, Node API, loader API and plugin API, and documentation covers integrations with Browserify, Brunch, Grunt, Gulp, Mocha and Karma. The project recommends local npm installation and a fresh Node.js installation; command-line use from webpack v4 onward also requires webpack-cli. The MIT-licensed software supports tree shaking and source maps. CSP is not enabled by default, and native CSS and HTML support are experimental.