StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Languages
  4. Languages
  5. Babel vs CoffeeScript

Babel vs CoffeeScript

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

CoffeeScript
CoffeeScript
Stacks3.7K
Followers1.2K
Votes1.0K
GitHub Stars16.6K
Forks2.0K
Babel
Babel
Stacks27.3K
Followers11.0K
Votes391
GitHub Stars43.8K
Forks5.8K

Babel vs CoffeeScript: What are the differences?

# Introduction
When it comes to JavaScript development, developers often rely on tools like Babel and CoffeeScript to improve their coding experience. Understanding the key differences between these two popular tools can help developers make informed choices about which one to use for their projects.

1. **Syntax**: Babel is a transpiler that focuses on converting modern JavaScript code (ES6/ES7) into an older version that can run on any browser, while CoffeeScript is a language that compiles into JavaScript, offering a different syntax that some developers find easier to read and write.

2. **EcmaScript Compatibility**: Babel strictly adheres to the EcmaScript standards and aims to provide compatibility with all the new features of the language, whereas CoffeeScript introduces its own set of syntax rules and features which may not always align perfectly with the latest JavaScript standards.

3. **Ease of Learning**: Babel requires developers to have a good understanding of modern JavaScript features and syntax to effectively use it, whereas CoffeeScript provides a simpler and more concise syntax that is easier for beginners to learn and master quickly.

4. **Community Support**: Babel has a larger and more active community of developers contributing to its development and maintenance, enabling faster updates and improved features, while CoffeeScript, although still popular, has a comparatively smaller community which may result in slower bug fixes and fewer resources available.

5. **Integration with Build Tools**: Babel seamlessly integrates with popular build tools like webpack, Babelify, and more, making it a preferred choice for projects that require a robust build pipeline, whereas CoffeeScript's integration with build tools may require additional configurations and plugins to work effectively in complex build environments.

6. **Code Transparency**: Babel produces code that closely resembles the original JavaScript source code, making it easier to debug and maintain, while CoffeeScript's compiled JavaScript code may not always be as readable or straightforward, potentially increasing debugging time and effort for developers.

In Summary, Babel and CoffeeScript offer distinct advantages and trade-offs in terms of syntax, compatibility, learning curve, community support, integration with build tools, and code transparency, making it essential for developers to consider these differences when choosing the best tool for their JavaScript projects.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Detailed Comparison

CoffeeScript
CoffeeScript
Babel
Babel

It adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell in an effort to enhance JavaScript's brevity and readability. Specific additional features include list comprehension and de-structuring assignment.

Babel will turn your ES6+ code into ES5 friendly code, so you can start using it right now without waiting for browser support.

String Interpolation; Statement Modifiers; Callback Handling; Comprehensions; The Fat Arrow; Scoping; Clean JavaScript Output.
Array comprehensions; Arrow functions; Async functions; Async generator functions; Classes; Class properties; Computed property names; Constants; Decorators; Default parameters; Destructuring; Exponentiation operator; For-of; Generators; Generator comprehensions; Let scoping; Modules; Module export extensions; Object rest/spread; Property method assignment; Property name shorthand; Rest parameters; React; Spread; Tail call optimisation; Template literals; Type annotations; Unicode regex; JSX; React; Flow; Node.js; Meteor; Rails; Broccoli; Browserify; Require.js; Brunch; Duo; Gobble; Grunt; Gulp; Make; Webpack; Connect; Jade; Jest; Karma; Mocha; Nodemon
Statistics
GitHub Stars
16.6K
GitHub Stars
43.8K
GitHub Forks
2.0K
GitHub Forks
5.8K
Stacks
3.7K
Stacks
27.3K
Followers
1.2K
Followers
11.0K
Votes
1.0K
Votes
391
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 199
    Easy to read
  • 179
    Faster to write
  • 126
    Syntactic sugar
  • 104
    Readable
  • 104
    Elegant
Cons
  • 3
    No ES6
  • 1
    Corner cases in syntax
  • 1
    Parentheses required in 0-ary function calls
  • 1
    Unclear what will be grouped to {…}
Pros
  • 165
    Modern Javascript works with all browsers
  • 77
    Open source
  • 60
    Integration with lots of tools
  • 56
    Easy setup
  • 26
    Very active on github
Integrations
No integrations available
Grunt
Grunt
Broccoli
Broccoli
Browserify
Browserify
Brunch
Brunch
Duo
Duo
gulp
gulp
RequireJS
RequireJS

What are some alternatives to CoffeeScript, Babel?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot