Electron vs Tauri in 2026: Desktop Apps, Dramatically Different

A productivity app team switched from Electron to Tauri. Their installer went from 120MB to 8MB. Cold-start time dropped 70%. RAM usage was halved.

Those numbers aren't outliers — they're what happens when you stop shipping an entire browser with every desktop app. Electron bundles Chromium. Tauri uses your operating system's native WebView. That architectural difference drives every trade-off between these two frameworks.

We compared them using real data from PkgPulse and developer benchmarks. Here's what the numbers say.

At a Glance: The Numbers

| Metric | Electron | Tauri | |--------|----------|-------| | npm Weekly Downloads | 1.66M | ~1.4K | | GitHub Stars | 115K+ | 88K+ | | Typical App Size | 50-150MB | 3-10MB | | Cold Start Time | 1-2 seconds | <0.5 seconds | | RAM Usage (idle) | 100-300MB | 20-80MB | | Backend Language | JavaScript (Node.js) | Rust | | Rendering Engine | Bundled Chromium | OS WebView | | Mobile Support | No (Electron Forge only desktop) | Yes (Tauri 2.0) | | Current Version | 34.x | 2.x | | License | MIT | MIT/Apache 2.0 |

See the full live comparison — download trends and health scores — at pkgpulse.com/compare/electron-vs-tauri

The headline stat: Electron dominates in npm downloads by 1,000x, but that metric is misleading. Tauri's backend is Rust — most Tauri developers install via cargo, not npm. GitHub stars tell a more nuanced story: Tauri gained 16K+ stars in 2024 alone, and adoption is up 35% year-over-year.

Architecture: The Core Difference

Every other trade-off flows from this one decision.

Electron: Ship the Browser

Electron bundles a full Chromium instance and Node.js runtime. Your web code runs in Chromium. Your backend code runs in Node.js. They communicate via IPC.

The advantage: perfect rendering consistency. Your app looks identical on Windows, macOS, and Linux because it's running in the same browser engine everywhere. No WebView quirks, no platform-specific CSS bugs, no rendering differences.

The cost: every Electron app ships ~80-120MB of Chromium, whether it needs it or not. Running three Electron apps means three Chromium instances in memory.

Tauri: Use What's Already There

Tauri uses the operating system's native WebView — WebView2 on Windows, WKWebView on macOS, WebKitGTK on Linux. The backend is Rust, compiled to a native binary.

The advantage: dramatically smaller apps. You're only shipping your code, not an entire browser. A basic Tauri app can be under 3MB.

The cost: rendering varies by platform. WebView2 (Edge/Chromium) is excellent on Windows. WKWebView is solid on macOS. WebKitGTK on Linux can lag behind in feature support and has occasional rendering differences. You need to test across platforms more carefully.

Performance: Not Even Close

For raw performance metrics, Tauri wins decisively.

| Metric | Electron | Tauri | |--------|----------|-------| | Cold Start | 1-2 seconds | 200-500ms | | RAM (idle app) | 100-300MB | 20-80MB | | RAM (active use) | 200-500MB+ | 40-150MB | | CPU (idle) | 1-5% | <1% | | Battery Impact | Significant | Minimal | | Installer Size | 50-150MB | 3-10MB |

For laptop users — particularly on battery — the difference is noticeable. Electron apps are consistently cited as battery drains. Tauri apps behave more like native applications in terms of resource consumption.

The caveat: if your app is computationally intensive (video editing, 3D rendering, complex data visualization), the rendering engine matters less than your actual workload. The performance gap narrows for CPU-heavy applications.

Security: Tauri's Design Advantage

Electron's security model has been a persistent concern. By default, renderer processes have broad access to Node.js APIs, and historically many Electron apps shipped with overly permissive configurations.

Tauri takes the opposite approach: everything is locked down by default. Its capability-based permission system requires you to explicitly grant access to filesystem, network, shell, and other system APIs:

{
  "tauri": {
    "allowlist": {
      "fs": { "readFile": true, "scope": ["$APP/*"] },
      "shell": { "open": true },
      "http": { "request": true, "scope": ["https://api.example.com/*"] }
    }
  }
}

Each permission is scoped — you grant read access only to specific directories, HTTP access only to specific domains. The attack surface is smaller by design.

Electron has improved security significantly with context isolation and process sandboxing, but the defaults are more permissive, and many existing apps haven't adopted the stricter configurations.

Ecosystem and Maturity

This is Electron's strongest argument.

Electron: Battle-Tested at Scale

Electron powers VS Code, Slack, Discord, Figma (partially), Notion, 1Password, Obsidian, and hundreds of other production apps. The ecosystem includes:

electron-forge — official build and packaging tool
electron-builder — community alternative with more customization
electron-updater — auto-update system
Massive plugin ecosystem — for everything from system tray to native menus
10+ years of production battle-testing

When you hit an edge case in Electron, someone has likely solved it before. Stack Overflow has 70K+ Electron questions. The documentation is comprehensive.

Tauri: Growing Fast, Still Maturing

Tauri 2.0 (released late 2024) was a milestone — adding mobile support (iOS and Android), a plugin system, and improved security. The ecosystem is growing:

Official plugins for filesystem, HTTP, shell, clipboard, notifications
tauri-plugin-store for persistent key-value storage
Mobile support — build iOS and Android apps from the same codebase
Strong community with active Discord and GitHub discussions

But the ecosystem is younger. You'll encounter fewer third-party plugins, fewer Stack Overflow answers, and more situations where you need to write Rust code for native functionality.

Developer Experience

Electron: JavaScript All the Way Down

If your team knows JavaScript, you can build Electron apps immediately. The frontend is web code. The backend is Node.js. There's no new language to learn.

// Main process
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')

app.whenReady().then(() => {
  const win = new BrowserWindow({ width: 800, height: 600 })
  win.loadFile('index.html')
})

Tauri: Web Frontend, Rust Backend

Tauri's frontend is your choice — React, Vue, Svelte, vanilla HTML. But system-level functionality requires Rust:

#[tauri::command]
fn greet(name: &str) -> String {
    format!("Hello, {}! You've been greeted from Rust!", name)
}

For teams without Rust experience, this is a real barrier. Rust's learning curve is steep — ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes are concepts most web developers haven't encountered. For teams that know Rust (or are willing to learn), the performance and safety guarantees are significant.

The practical reality: many Tauri apps need minimal Rust. If your backend needs are simple (file I/O, HTTP requests, system notifications), the official plugins handle most use cases without custom Rust code.

When to Choose Electron

Your team is pure JavaScript/TypeScript and learning Rust isn't feasible
Rendering consistency is critical — same pixels on every platform
You need deep native integrations that only Electron's mature plugin ecosystem provides
You're building on an existing Electron app — migration costs are high
Your app is resource-intensive anyway — video/audio apps where Chromium overhead is negligible relative to the workload

When to Choose Tauri

App size and performance matter — your users notice download sizes and RAM usage
Security is a top concern — Tauri's capability-based model is stricter by default
You want mobile support — Tauri 2.0 supports iOS and Android from the same codebase
Your team knows or is learning Rust — the long-term investment pays off in performance and safety
You're starting a new project — no migration costs, and the ecosystem is mature enough for most use cases

The Verdict

Electron remains the safe, proven choice. It has a decade of production apps, a massive ecosystem, and zero language barrier for web teams. If you're building a complex desktop app and your team is JavaScript-only, Electron is still the right call.

Tauri is the future-facing choice. Smaller binaries, better performance, stronger security defaults, and mobile support. The Rust requirement is a real trade-off, but for teams willing to invest, Tauri produces objectively better end-user experiences.

The trend is clear: new desktop app projects are increasingly choosing Tauri. But Electron isn't going anywhere — VS Code, Slack, and Discord aren't being rewritten.

Compare Electron vs Tauri on PkgPulse →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Tauri better than Electron in 2026?

Tauri produces smaller, faster, and more secure applications by default. But "better" depends on your team and project. If you need maximum ecosystem maturity and JavaScript-only development, Electron is the better choice. If performance, security, and app size are priorities, Tauri wins on every metric. See the live comparison on PkgPulse for current data.

Do I need to know Rust to use Tauri?

For basic apps, minimal Rust knowledge is needed — Tauri's official plugins handle common tasks like file I/O, HTTP, and notifications. For custom native functionality, you'll write Rust commands. The learning curve is steep but the community provides good templates and examples to get started.

Can Tauri build mobile apps?

Yes. Tauri 2.0 (released late 2024) supports iOS and Android alongside desktop platforms. You build from the same codebase with platform-specific configuration. Mobile support is newer and less battle-tested than Electron's desktop support, but it's production-ready for many use cases.

Explore more comparisons: Electron vs NW.js or Tauri vs Neutralinojs on PkgPulse.

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