Tauri vs Electron in 2026: bundle size, RAM, and the numbers nobody quotes.
Both ship desktop apps. Both render web tech. They are otherwise nothing alike. Here's the side-by-side, with the same app built twice and measured.
Same notes app, built twice. Tauri ships a 8 MB binary that boots in 0.42 s and idles at 38 MB of RAM. Electron ships a 182 MB binary that boots in 2.4 s and idles at 281 MB. Both render the same React frontend. The only meaningful place where Electron wins is "you've already shipped on Electron and rewriting is more expensive than the inefficiency."
The setup
Markdown notes app. React 18 frontend. SQLite for persistence. Tray icon. System file picker. Both builds use the same React code. Tested on M2 macOS, signed and notarized, fresh installs.
Round 1 — Bundle size
| Artifact | Electron | Tauri |
|---|---|---|
| .dmg installer | 182 MB | 8.1 MB |
| Unpacked .app | 410 MB | 22 MB |
| Auto-update delta | ~100 MB | ~2 MB |
Tauri uses the OS's WebView (WebKit on macOS, WebView2 on Windows). Electron embeds Chromium. That's where 95% of the size difference comes from.
Round 1 winner: Tauri. Not even close.
Round 2 — Performance
| Metric | Electron | Tauri |
|---|---|---|
| Cold start to first paint | 2.4 s | 0.42 s |
| RAM idle (60s) | 281 MB | 38 MB |
| RAM with 1k notes loaded | 410 MB | 62 MB |
| CPU idle (1 min avg) | 2.1% | 0.3% |
| Battery impact (5 min, idle) | "High" (per Activity Monitor) | "Low" |
Round 2 winner: Tauri, by a multiple-x margin in every row.
Round 3 — Developer experience
This is the round where Electron finally has something to point at.
- Electron docs and ecosystem are deeper. Stack Overflow has 12 years of answers. Tauri only has ~4.
- Electron's IPC is JS-on-both-sides. Easier mental model than "TS frontend ↔ Rust backend ↔ JS frontend."
- Electron has more pre-built native plugins. Tauri's ecosystem is smaller — but covers 80% of cases now.
- Tauri requires Rust toolchain. 200 MB install once. After that, painless.
If you've never written a desktop app before, Tauri is now actually easier — the scaffold is faster, the docs are better, and the learning curve for "I just want to render web UI" is shorter. The Rust part only matters for native plugins, and most apps don't need them.
Round 3 winner: Electron, narrowly. But the gap is closing every quarter.
Electron has 12 years of Stack Overflow answers. Tauri has answers that aren't outdated. Pick your poison.
Where each one wins (the honest version)
Pick Tauri if you…
- Are starting a new desktop app today
- Care about install size, RAM, or laptop battery life
- Want native menus / tray / shortcuts that actually feel native
- Don't have an existing Electron codebase to migrate
- Are comfortable letting an agent write the small Rust parts
Stay on Electron if you…
- Have a 50k+ LOC Electron app (rewriting is expensive)
- Need a specific Node-native module with no Rust equivalent
- Your team has zero appetite for the Rust toolchain on CI
- You're shipping a browser-shaped product (DevTools, Postman)
Where buildr fits
buildr's desktop target is Tauri + Rust by default. The "I want a desktop app" prompt scaffolds Tauri. We don't ship an Electron template. The agent writes the Rust commands when needed and the frontend in the framework you prefer (React, Svelte, or vanilla).
For new desktop apps in 2026, Tauri is the default.
Electron isn't dead. It's just not the answer to "what should I start a new desktop app with." The 22x bundle-size delta and 7x RAM delta are not numbers your future users will tolerate when the alternative exists.
Ship a Tauri desktop app from a chat prompt.
"Build me a desktop notes app with sync" — same chat, real Tauri scaffold, signed and notarized binary at the end. Free for open source.
Build my app free