This is a simple code size comparison between Protobuf-ES and google-protobuf.
We are generating code for the module buf.build/bufbuild/buf
once with protoc-gen-js from github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf-javascript,
once with protoc-gen-es from Protobuf-ES. Then we bundle a snippet of code that imports from one generated file
with esbuild, minify the bundle, and compress it like a web server would
usually do. We repeat this for an increasing number of files.
Tabular data
| code generator | files | bundle size | minified | compressed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protobuf-ES | 1 | 126,585 b | 65,684 b | 15,268 b |
| Protobuf-ES | 4 | 128,774 b | 67,192 b | 15,925 b |
| Protobuf-ES | 8 | 131,536 b | 68,963 b | 16,458 b |
| Protobuf-ES | 16 | 141,986 b | 76,944 b | 18,756 b |
| Protobuf-ES | 32 | 169,777 b | 98,962 b | 24,290 b |
| protobuf-javascript | 1 | 104,048 b | 70,318 b | 15,474 b |
| protobuf-javascript | 4 | 130,537 b | 85,670 b | 16,986 b |
| protobuf-javascript | 8 | 152,429 b | 98,042 b | 18,111 b |
| protobuf-javascript | 16 | 311,454 b | 192,881 b | 25,504 b |
| protobuf-javascript | 32 | 1,070,891 b | 679,746 b | 54,963 b |