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Vite

A fast frontend build tool with native ESM dev server.

Vite (French for "fast") serves source files as native ES modules during development, which gives instant hot module replacement without bundling — open a project, edit a file, and see the change in the browser within milliseconds. Production builds use Rollup for bundling because the runtime overhead of native ESM is higher than a well-bundled output.

Evan You started Vite in 2020 alongside Vue 3. While initially designed for Vue, Vite is framework-agnostic — official templates exist for Vue, React, Svelte, Solid, Preact, Lit, and vanilla JavaScript. SvelteKit, Nuxt 3, Remix (eventually), and many other meta-frameworks are built on Vite.

Vite has captured most of the new-project bundler share over the past several years. The combination of near-instant dev server start, fast HMR, simple configuration, and the broader move away from Webpack's complexity has been compelling. The underlying esbuild and Rollup combination keeps Vite fast without locking it to either tool's specific capabilities.

npm create vite@latest my-app
cd my-app && npm install && npm run dev