Tauri vs Electron in 2023 & beyond

Episode Overview

• The founder of Tauri reflects on his past approach of framing Tauri as definitively "better" than Electron, admitting it was a mistake to engage in tribalism.
• He provides a balanced view, acknowledging Electron's significant strengths, such as providing a unified web interface and a powerful, bundled Node.js runtime.
• He then contrasts this by highlighting Tauri's core advantages, which include minimal application size, lower memory usage, and faster startup times due to its philosophy of shipping only necessary components.
• The discussion ultimately frames the choice between Tauri and Electron as a trade-off between a mature, all-inclusive ecosystem (Electron) and a lean, performance-optimized one (Tauri).

Key Concepts

• Electron's Strengths: The primary benefits of Electron are its ability to provide a consistent, unified web interface across all major desktop platforms and its inclusion of a powerful, general-purpose Node.js runtime. Its decade-long maturity also means extensive documentation and community support.
• Tauri's Strengths: Tauri's main value proposition is efficiency and performance. By avoiding a bundled, generalized runtime and shipping only the essential components, it achieves significantly smaller application sizes (as low as 400-600 KB), faster startup, lower memory pressure, and fewer system calls.
• Framework Trade-offs: The choice between the two is not about which is "better" but about prioritizing needs. Electron offers a comprehensive, familiar JavaScript environment at the cost of larger binaries and higher resource usage. Tauri offers superior performance and a smaller footprint at the cost of a different development paradigm that doesn't include a full Node.js runtime by default.
• Performance at Scale: The speaker argues that while startup time differences might seem like splitting hairs in a single instance, the global impact of millions of larger, more resource-intensive apps (like those built with Electron) is a significant consideration.

Quotes

• At 00:04 - "I made some mistakes engaging in this idea that Tauri is better than Electron, and here's why... And after reflecting on it, I think that there's a lot of things that Electron brings to the table." - The speaker opens with a moment of reflection, setting a more nuanced and balanced tone for the comparison.
• At 00:50 - "You also get an amazing general runtime of Node.js bundled with joy that can do anything. So basically, if you can think it in JS, your isomorphic skills are going to come in totally handy." - This quote succinctly captures the core developer experience benefit of Electron: its powerful, all-in-one JavaScript environment.
• At 01:36 - "What Tauri has going for it are... you only ship the parts of software that you need to run it. You don't need to ship a generalized runtime." - This quote clearly defines Tauri's fundamental architectural difference and the source of its performance advantages over Electron.

Takeaways

• Evaluate frameworks on trade-offs, not tribalism. Instead of seeking a single "best" tool, understand the specific strengths and weaknesses of each option. Electron excels in ecosystem maturity and developer convenience, while Tauri excels in performance and efficiency.
• Prioritize your application's core requirements. If your priority is a minimal footprint, low memory usage, and fast startup, Tauri is the superior choice. If you need the full power of the Node.js ecosystem and a consistent UI is paramount, Electron remains a very strong option.
• Consider the hidden costs of dependencies. Electron's convenience of bundling a full runtime with every application leads to significant bloat. For developers conscious of disk space and resource consumption, Tauri's "ship only what you need" philosophy offers a more sustainable and efficient alternative.