Typescript build time performance comparison (tsc vs esbuild)

29 September, 2021

Typescript project build time performance comparison (tsc vs esbuild)

Lets have a simple Typescript Express base API to test the build time differences:

import express, { Request, Response } from "express";

const app = express();
const port = 3000;


app.get('/ping', (request: Request, response: Response) =>{
	response.status(200).json({status: 'pong'});
});

app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Application is running on port ${port}.`);
});

Install typescript, esbuild dependencies and add build config files.
Setup package.json build, start commands.

Now let's check the build time for: tsc

Build

time npm run ts:build

Output:

> typescript-esbuild@1.0.0 ts:build
> tsc

real    0m3.291s
user    0m0.030s
sys     0m0.166s

Now let's check the build time for: esbuild

Build

time npm run es:build

Output:

> typescript-esbuild@1.0.0 es:build
> node ./esbuild.js


real    0m1.413s
user    0m0.030s
sys     0m0.230s

Run

npm start

Output:

> typescript-esbuild@1.0.0 start
> node build/index.js

Application is running on port 3000.

Performance comparison

As per the build time result it's clear that esbuild perform much better than default Typescript built in tsc in terms of build timing.

For more Benchmark details,fallow the Link