Babel vs gulp: What are the differences?

Babel: Use next generation JavaScript, today. Babel will turn your ES6+ code into ES5 friendly code, so you can start using it right now without waiting for browser support; gulp: The streaming build system. Build system automating tasks: minification and copying of all JavaScript files, static images. More capable of watching files to automatically rerun the task when a file changes.

Babel belongs to "JavaScript Compilers" category of the tech stack, while gulp can be primarily classified under "JS Build Tools / JS Task Runners".

Some of the features offered by Babel are:

• Array comprehensions
• Arrow functions
• Async functions

On the other hand, gulp provides the following key features:

• By preferring code over configuration, gulp keeps simple things simple and makes complex tasks manageable.
• By harnessing the power of node's streams you get fast builds that don't write intermediary files to disk.
• gulp's strict plugin guidelines assure plugins stay simple and work the way you expect.

"Modern Javascript works with all browsers", "Open source" and "Integration with lots of tools" are the key factors why developers consider Babel; whereas "Build speed", "Readable" and "Code-over-configuration" are the primary reasons why gulp is favored.

Babel and gulp are both open source tools. It seems that Babel with 33.5K GitHub stars and 3.57K forks on GitHub has more adoption than gulp with 31.3K GitHub stars and 4.4K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, gulp has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1158 company stacks & 689 developers stacks; compared to Babel, which is listed in 888 company stacks and 661 developer stacks.