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Bun’s fast native bundler can be used via the bun build CLI command or the Bun.build() JavaScript API.

At a Glance

  • JS API: await Bun.build({ entrypoints, outdir })
  • CLI: bun build <entry> --outdir ./out
  • Watch: --watch for incremental rebuilds
  • Targets: --target browser|bun|node
  • Formats: --format esm|cjs|iife (experimental for cjs/iife)
build.ts
It’s fast. The numbers below represent performance on esbuild’s three.js benchmark.

Why bundle?

The bundler is a key piece of infrastructure in the JavaScript ecosystem. As a brief overview of why bundling is so important:
  • Reducing HTTP requests. A single package in node_modules may consist of hundreds of files, and large applications may have dozens of such dependencies. Loading each of these files with a separate HTTP request becomes untenable very quickly, so bundlers are used to convert our application source code into a smaller number of self-contained “bundles” that can be loaded with a single request.
  • Code transforms. Modern apps are commonly built with languages or tools like TypeScript, JSX, and CSS modules, all of which must be converted into plain JavaScript and CSS before they can be consumed by a browser. The bundler is the natural place to configure these transformations.
  • Framework features. Frameworks rely on bundler plugins & code transformations to implement common patterns like file-system routing, client-server code co-location (think getServerSideProps or Remix loaders), and server components.
  • Full-stack Applications. Bun’s bundler can handle both server and client code in a single command, enabling optimized production builds and single-file executables. With build-time HTML imports, you can bundle your entire application — frontend assets and backend server — into a single deployable unit.
Let’s jump into the bundler API.
The Bun bundler is not intended to replace tsc for typechecking or generating type declarations.

Basic example

Let’s build our first bundle. You have the following two files, which implement a client-side rendered React app.
Here, index.tsx is the “entrypoint” to our application. Commonly, this will be a script that performs some side effect, like starting a server or—in this case—initializing a React root. Because we’re using TypeScript & JSX, we need to bundle our code before it can be sent to the browser. To create our bundle:
For each file specified in entrypoints, Bun will generate a new bundle. This bundle will be written to disk in the ./out directory (as resolved from the current working directory). After running the build, the file system looks like this:
file system
The contents of out/index.js will look something like this:
out/index.js

Watch mode

Like the runtime and test runner, the bundler supports watch mode natively.
terminal

Content types

Like the Bun runtime, the bundler supports an array of file types out of the box. The following table breaks down the bundler’s set of standard “loaders”. Refer to Bundler > File types for full documentation.

Assets

If the bundler encounters an import with an unrecognized extension, it treats the imported file as an external file. The referenced file is copied as-is into outdir, and the import is resolved as a path to the file.
The exact behavior of the file loader is also impacted by naming and publicPath.
Refer to the Bundler > Loaders page for more complete documentation on the file loader.

Plugins

The behavior described in this table can be overridden or extended with plugins. Refer to the Bundler > Loaders page for complete documentation.

API

entrypoints

Required An array of paths corresponding to the entrypoints of our application. One bundle will be generated for each entrypoint.
build.ts

files

A map of file paths to their contents for in-memory bundling. This allows you to bundle virtual files that don’t exist on disk, or override the contents of files that do exist. This option is only available in the JavaScript API. File contents can be provided as a string, Blob, TypedArray, or ArrayBuffer.

Bundle entirely from memory

You can bundle code without any files on disk by providing all sources via files:
build.ts
When all entrypoints are in the files map, the current working directory is used as the root.

Override files on disk

In-memory files take priority over files on disk. This lets you override specific files while keeping the rest of your codebase unchanged:
build.ts

Mix disk and virtual files

Real files on disk can import virtual files, and virtual files can import real files:
build.ts
This is useful for code generation, injecting build-time constants, or testing with mock modules.

outdir

The directory where output files will be written.
build.ts
If outdir is not passed to the JavaScript API, bundled code will not be written to disk. Bundled files are returned in an array of BuildArtifact objects. These objects are Blobs with extra properties; see Outputs for complete documentation.
build.ts
When outdir is set, the path property on a BuildArtifact will be the absolute path to where it was written to.

target

The intended execution environment for the bundle.
build.ts
Depending on the target, Bun will apply different module resolution rules and optimizations.

browser

Default. For generating bundles that are intended for execution by a browser. Prioritizes the "browser" export condition when resolving imports. Importing any built-in modules, like node:events or node:path will work, but calling some functions, like fs.readFile will not work.

bun

For generating bundles that are intended to be run by the Bun runtime. In many cases, it isn’t necessary to bundle server-side code; you can directly execute the source code without modification. However, bundling your server code can reduce startup times and improve running performance. This is the target to use for building full-stack applications with build-time HTML imports, where both server and client code are bundled together.All bundles generated with target: "bun" are marked with a special // @bun pragma, which indicates to the Bun runtime that there’s no need to re-transpile the file before execution.If any entrypoints contains a Bun shebang (#!/usr/bin/env bun) the bundler will default to target: "bun" instead of "browser".When using target: "bun" and format: "cjs" together, the // @bun @bun-cjs pragma is added and the CommonJS wrapper function is not compatible with Node.js.

node

For generating bundles that are intended to be run by Node.js. Prioritizes the "node" export condition when resolving imports, and outputs .mjs. In the future, this will automatically polyfill the Bun global and other built-in bun:* modules, though this is not yet implemented.

format

Specifies the module format to be used in the generated bundles. Bun defaults to "esm", and provides experimental support for "cjs" and "iife".

format: “esm” - ES Module

This is the default format, which supports ES Module syntax including top-level await, import.meta, and more.
build.ts
To use ES Module syntax in browsers, set format to "esm" and make sure your <script type="module"> tag has type="module" set.

format: “cjs” - CommonJS

To build a CommonJS module, set format to "cjs". When choosing "cjs", the default target changes from "browser" (esm) to "node" (cjs). CommonJS modules transpiled with format: "cjs", target: "node" can be executed in both Bun and Node.js (assuming the APIs in use are supported by both).
build.ts

format: “iife” - IIFE

TODO: document IIFE once we support globalNames.

jsx

Configure JSX transform behavior. Allows fine-grained control over how JSX is compiled. Classic runtime example (uses factory and fragment):
Automatic runtime example (uses importSource):

splitting

Whether to enable code splitting.
build.ts
When true, the bundler will enable code splitting. When multiple entrypoints both import the same file, module, or set of files/modules, it’s often useful to split the shared code into a separate bundle. This shared bundle is known as a chunk. Consider the following files:
To bundle entry-a.ts and entry-b.ts with code-splitting enabled:
build.ts
Running this build will result in the following files:
file system
The generated chunk-2fce6291bf86559d.js file contains the shared code. To avoid collisions, the file name automatically includes a content hash by default. This can be customized with naming.

plugins

A list of plugins to use during bundling.
build.ts
Bun implements a universal plugin system for both Bun’s runtime and bundler. Refer to the plugin documentation for complete documentation.

env

Controls how environment variables are handled during bundling. Internally, this uses define to inject environment variables into the bundle, but makes it easier to specify the environment variables to inject.

env: “inline”

Injects environment variables into the bundled output by converting process.env.FOO references to string literals containing the actual environment variable values.
build.ts
For the input below:
input.js
The generated bundle will contain the following code:
output.js

env: “PUBLIC_*” (prefix)

Inlines environment variables matching the given prefix (the part before the * character), replacing process.env.FOO with the actual environment variable value. This is useful for selectively inlining environment variables for things like public-facing URLs or client-side tokens, without worrying about injecting private credentials into output bundles.
build.ts
For example, given the following environment variables:
terminal
And source code:
index.tsx
The generated bundle will contain the following code:
output.js

env: “disable”

Disables environment variable injection entirely.

sourcemap

Specifies the type of sourcemap to generate.
build.ts
The associated *.js.map sourcemap will be a JSON file containing an equivalent debugId property.

minify

Whether to enable minification. Default false.
When targeting bun, identifiers will be minified by default.
To enable all minification options:
build.ts
To granularly enable certain minifications:
build.ts

external

A list of import paths to consider external. Defaults to [].
build.ts
An external import is one that will not be included in the final bundle. Instead, the import statement will be left as-is, to be resolved at runtime. For instance, consider the following entrypoint file:
index.tsx
Normally, bundling index.tsx would generate a bundle containing the entire source code of the “zod” package. If instead, we want to leave the import statement as-is, we can mark it as external:
build.ts
The generated bundle will look something like this:
out/index.js
To mark all imports as external, use the wildcard *:
build.ts

packages

Control whether package dependencies are included to bundle or not. Possible values: bundle (default), external. Bun treats any import which path do not start with ., .. or / as package.
build.ts

naming

Customizes the generated file names. Defaults to ./[dir]/[name].[ext].
build.ts
By default, the names of the generated bundles are based on the name of the associated entrypoint.
file system
With multiple entrypoints, the generated file hierarchy will reflect the directory structure of the entrypoints.
file system
The names and locations of the generated files can be customized with the naming field. This field accepts a template string that is used to generate the filenames for all bundles corresponding to entrypoints. where the following tokens are replaced with their corresponding values:
  • [name] - The name of the entrypoint file, without the extension.
  • [ext] - The extension of the generated bundle.
  • [hash] - A hash of the bundle contents.
  • [dir] - The relative path from the project root to the parent directory of the source file.
For example: We can combine these tokens to create a template string. For instance, to include the hash in the generated bundle names:
build.ts
This build would result in the following file structure:
file system
When a string is provided for the naming field, it is used only for bundles that correspond to entrypoints. The names of chunks and copied assets are not affected. Using the JavaScript API, separate template strings can be specified for each type of generated file.
build.ts

root

The root directory of the project.
build.ts
If unspecified, it is computed to be the first common ancestor of all entrypoint files. Consider the following file structure:
file system
We can build both entrypoints in the pages directory:
This would result in a file structure like this:
file system
Since the pages directory is the first common ancestor of the entrypoint files, it is considered the project root. This means that the generated bundles live at the top level of the out directory; there is no out/pages directory. This behavior can be overridden by specifying the root option:
By specifying . as root, the generated file structure will look like this:

publicPath

A prefix to be appended to any import paths in bundled code. In many cases, generated bundles will contain no import statements. After all, the goal of bundling is to combine all of the code into a single file. However there are a number of cases with the generated bundles will contain import statements.
  • Asset imports — When importing an unrecognized file type like *.svg, the bundler defers to the file loader, which copies the file into outdir as is. The import is converted into a variable
  • External modules — Files and modules can be marked as external, in which case they will not be included in the bundle. Instead, the import statement will be left in the final bundle.
  • Chunking. When splitting is enabled, the bundler may generate separate “chunk” files that represent code that is shared among multiple entrypoints.
In any of these cases, the final bundles may contain paths to other files. By default these imports are relative. Here is an example of an asset import:
Setting publicPath will prefix all file paths with the specified value.
build.ts
The output file would now look something like this.
out/index.js

define

A map of global identifiers to be replaced at build time. Keys of this object are identifier names, and values are JSON strings that will be inlined.
build.ts

loader

A map of file extensions to built-in loader names. Use this to customize how certain files are loaded.
build.ts
A banner to be added to the final bundle, this can be a directive like "use client" for react or a comment block such as a license for the code.
build.ts
A footer to be added to the final bundle. This can be a comment block for a license or a fun easter egg.
build.ts

drop

Remove function calls from a bundle. For example, --drop=console will remove all calls to console.log. Arguments to calls will also be removed, regardless of if those arguments may have side effects. Dropping debugger will remove all debugger statements.
build.ts

features

Enable compile-time feature flags for dead-code elimination. This provides a way to conditionally include or exclude code paths at bundle time using import { feature } from "bun:bundle".
app.ts
build.ts
The feature() function is replaced with true or false at bundle time. Combined with minification, unreachable code is eliminated:
Input
Output (with --feature PREMIUM --minify)
Output (without --feature PREMIUM, with --minify)
Key behaviors:
  • feature() requires a string literal argument — dynamic values are not supported
  • The bun:bundle import is completely removed from the output
  • Works with bun build, bun run, and bun test
  • Multiple flags can be enabled: --feature FLAG_A --feature FLAG_B
  • For type safety, augment the Registry interface to restrict feature() to known flags (see below)
Use cases:
  • Platform-specific code (feature("SERVER") vs feature("CLIENT"))
  • Environment-based features (feature("DEVELOPMENT"))
  • Gradual feature rollouts
  • A/B testing variants
  • Paid tier features
Type safety: By default, feature() accepts any string. To get autocomplete and catch typos at compile time, create an env.d.ts file (or add to an existing .d.ts) and augment the Registry interface:
env.d.ts
Ensure the file is included in your tsconfig.json (e.g., "include": ["src", "env.d.ts"]). Now feature() only accepts those flags, and invalid strings like feature("TYPO") become type errors.

optimizeImports

Skip parsing unused submodules of barrel files (re-export index files). When you import only a few named exports from a large library, normally the bundler parses every file the barrel re-exports. With optimizeImports, only the submodules you actually use are parsed.
build.ts
For example, import { Button } from 'antd' normally parses all ~3000 modules that antd/index.js re-exports. With optimizeImports: ['antd'], only the Button submodule is parsed. This works for pure barrel files — files where every named export is a re-export (export { X } from './x'). If a barrel file has any local exports (export const foo = ...), or if any importer uses import *, all submodules are loaded. export * re-exports are always loaded (never deferred) to avoid circular resolution issues. Only named re-exports (export { X } from './x') that aren’t used by any importer are deferred. Automatic mode: Packages with "sideEffects": false in their package.json get barrel optimization automatically — no optimizeImports config needed. Use optimizeImports for packages that don’t have this field. Plugins: Resolve and load plugins work correctly with barrel optimization. Deferred submodules go through the plugin pipeline when they are eventually loaded.

metafile

Generate metadata about the build in a structured format. The metafile contains information about all input files, output files, their sizes, imports, and exports. This is useful for:
  • Bundle analysis: Understand what’s contributing to bundle size
  • Visualization: Feed into tools like esbuild’s bundle analyzer or other visualization tools
  • Dependency tracking: See the full import graph of your application
  • CI integration: Track bundle size changes over time
build.ts

Markdown metafile

Use --metafile-md to generate a markdown metafile, which is LLM-friendly and readable in the terminal:
terminal
Both --metafile and --metafile-md can be used together:
terminal

metafile option formats

In the JavaScript API, metafile accepts several forms:
build.ts
The metafile structure contains:

Outputs

The Bun.build function returns a Promise<BuildOutput>, defined as:
build.ts
The outputs array contains all the files that were generated by the build. Each artifact implements the Blob interface.
build.ts
Each artifact also contains the following properties: Similar to BunFile, BuildArtifact objects can be passed directly into new Response().
build.ts
The Bun runtime implements special pretty-printing of BuildArtifact object to make debugging easier.

Bytecode

The bytecode: boolean option can be used to generate bytecode for any JavaScript/TypeScript entrypoints. This can greatly improve startup times for large applications. Requires "target": "bun" and is dependent on a matching version of Bun.
  • CommonJS: Works with or without compile: true. Generates a .jsc file alongside each entrypoint.
  • ESM: Requires compile: true. Bytecode and module metadata are embedded in the standalone executable.
Without an explicit format, bytecode defaults to CommonJS.
build.ts

Executables

Bun supports “compiling” a JavaScript/TypeScript entrypoint into a standalone executable. This executable contains a copy of the Bun binary.
terminal
Refer to Bundler > Executables for complete documentation.

Logs and errors

On failure, Bun.build returns a rejected promise with an AggregateError. This can be logged to the console for pretty printing of the error list, or programmatically read with a try/catch block.
build.ts
Most of the time, an explicit try/catch is not needed, as Bun will neatly print uncaught exceptions. You can use a top-level await on the Bun.build call instead. Each item in error.errors is an instance of BuildMessage or ResolveMessage (subclasses of Error), containing detailed information for each error.
build.ts
On build success, the returned object contains a logs property, which contains bundler warnings and info messages.
build.ts

Reference

Typescript Definitions

CLI Usage

General Configuration

boolean
Set NODE_ENV=production and enable minification
boolean
Use a bytecode cache when compiling
string
default:"browser"
Intended execution environment for the bundle. One of browser, bun, or node
string
Pass custom resolution conditions
string
default:"disable"
Inline environment variables into the bundle as process.env.$. To inline variables matching a prefix, use a glob like FOO_PUBLIC_*

Output & File Handling

string
default:"dist"
Output directory (used when building multiple entry points)
string
Write output to a specific file
string
default:"none"
Generate source maps. One of linked, inline, external, or none
string
Add a banner to the output (e.g. “use client” for React Server Components)
Add a footer to the output (e.g. // built with bun!)
string
default:"esm"
Module format of the output bundle. One of esm, cjs, or iife. Defaults to cjs when —bytecode is used.

File Naming

string
default:"[dir]/[name].[ext]"
Customize entry point filenames
string
default:"[name]-[hash].[ext]"
Customize chunk filenames
string
default:"[name]-[hash].[ext]"
Customize asset filenames

Bundling Options

string
Root directory used when bundling multiple entry points
boolean
Enable code splitting for shared modules
string
Prefix to be added to import paths in bundled code
string
Exclude modules from the bundle (supports wildcards). Alias: -e
string
default:"bundle"
How to treat dependencies: external or bundle
boolean
Transpile only — do not bundle
boolean
Chunk CSS files together to reduce duplication (only when multiple entry points import CSS)

Minification & Optimization

boolean
default:"true"
Re-emit Dead Code Elimination annotations. Disabled when —minify-whitespace is used
boolean
Enable all minification options
boolean
Minify syntax and inline constants
boolean
Minify whitespace
boolean
Minify variable and function identifiers
boolean
Preserve original function and class names when minifying

Development Features

boolean
Rebuild automatically when files change
boolean
Don’t clear the terminal when rebuilding with —watch
boolean
Enable React Fast Refresh transform (for development testing)
boolean
Run the React Compiler over .jsx/.tsx files, automatically memoizing components and hooks. Output mode is derived from --target (browser → client, bun/node → ssr). Experimental.

Standalone Executables

boolean
Generate a standalone Bun executable containing the bundle. Implies —production
string
Prepend arguments to the standalone executable’s execArgv

Windows Executable Details

boolean
Prevent a console window from opening when running a compiled Windows executable
string
Set an icon for the Windows executable
string
Set the Windows executable product name
string
Set the Windows executable company name
string
Set the Windows executable version (e.g. 1.2.3.4)
string
Set the Windows executable description
Set the Windows executable copyright notice

Experimental & App Building

boolean
(EXPERIMENTAL) Build a web app for production using Bun Bake
boolean
(EXPERIMENTAL) Enable React Server Components
boolean
When —app is set, dump all server files to disk even for static builds
boolean
When —app is set, disable all minification