Electron vs. Tauri: Which cross-platform framework is for you?


Unlike Electron, not very many mainstream desktop applications are built with Tauri, at least, not yet. Some of that may be due to Electron’s legacy presence, or the relative complexity of Rust versus JavaScript. But a fair number of apps, both commercial and open source, have been written with Tauri. The pgMagic GUI client for PostgreSQL, the Payload file transfer tool, and the Noor team chat app are examples.

Payload, a file transfer app written in Tauri

Payload, a file transfer app written in Tauri. The runtime memory footprint is a mere 4MB on Microsoft Windows, but the app has access to just about all the same system-level functionality as an Electron app.

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Which is better: Tauri or Electron?

Right now, Electron remains the most prominent and well-understood of the cross-platform UI frameworks. For all the criticism levied against it, it’s still a popular default choice for delivering cross-platform applications with good system integration and a rich GUI. But complaints about Electron’s memory consumption and the size of its binaries are valid, and they aren’t going away soon. They’re intimately tied to the design of Electron apps, and only a redesign of either Electron or the underlying browser components will fix that issue.

Tauri apps are designed differently from the ground up to use less disk space and less memory. But that comes at the cost of it being a newer technology that relies heavily on Rust—a relatively new language, also with a relatively new development ecosystem. A commitment to Tauri requires a commitment to both Rust and JavaScript, for the back end and front end, respectively.



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