Tauri vs Electron for Git clients: a perf benchmark
Most cross-platform desktop Git clients are built on Electron: GitKraken, GitHub Desktop, GitFiend. GitSquid is one of the few built on Tauri. The framework choice is invisible to end users, but it shapes RAM usage, install size, cold start time, and idle CPU. This article puts numbers on those differences.
Disclosure: this article is published on the GitSquid website, which is built on Tauri. We have tried to measure honestly — the numbers below are reproducible.
Why the framework matters for a Git GUI
Git GUIs run for hours. They are background tools you keep open while your editor and browser take focus. Their resource footprint compounds: a Git client that uses 400 MB of RAM is fine in isolation, but on a 16 GB machine that is also running an editor, browser, Slack, Docker, and a few language servers, every extra background MB matters.
The framework choice impacts:
- Install size — how much disk the application occupies.
- Cold start — how long from launching the app to seeing the first repository.
- RAM at idle — how much memory the app holds when you have a repository open but are not actively interacting.
- CPU at idle — whether the app spins the fan when you switch focus to your editor.
How Electron and Tauri differ architecturally
Electron bundles a full Chromium browser plus a Node.js runtime with every application. Each app is a complete browser. The advantage: deterministic rendering — the same Chromium version everywhere. The downside: each app ships ~150 MB of Chromium binaries.
Tauri uses the operating system's existing webview — WKWebView on macOS, WebView2 on Windows, WebKitGTK on Linux. The Rust-written application logic talks to JavaScript in the webview through a thin IPC layer. The advantage: tiny binary, low RAM, fast cold start. The downside: rendering can vary slightly across platforms because each OS has a different webview engine.
Methodology
We benchmarked four Git clients on the same machine (M2 MacBook Pro, 16 GB RAM, macOS 15) with the same medium-sized repository open (the GitSquid source repo, ~600 commits, ~150 files). For each app:
- Install size: measured with `du -sh /Applications/<App>.app`
- Cold start: killed the app, launched it, started a stopwatch, stopped it when the repository was visible and interactive.
- RAM at idle: opened the repo, waited 30 seconds, recorded `ps -o rss` for the main process and any helper processes. Summed.
- CPU at idle: sampled `top` over 60 seconds with the app focused but no user interaction.
Numbers vary across machines and OS versions, but the ratios stay consistent. Reproduce on your hardware to verify.
Results
| Tool | Framework | Install size | Cold start | RAM at idle | CPU at idle |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitSquid | Tauri 2.x / Rust | ~25 MB | ~0.7 s | ~180 MB | <1% |
| GitKraken | Electron | ~300 MB | ~3.5 s | ~750 MB | 2-5% |
| GitHub Desktop | Electron | ~200 MB | ~2.0 s | ~450 MB | 1-3% |
| Fork (for reference) | Native (Cocoa) | ~50 MB | ~0.5 s | ~150 MB | <1% |
Two takeaways:
- Tauri-based GitSquid is in the same league as native Fork on every metric. The webview-based architecture is leaner than Electron by a factor of 4-5x on install size and 2-4x on RAM.
- Electron-based clients pay a substantial overhead in install size (10x more than Tauri), RAM (3-4x more than Tauri), and cold start (3-5x slower). This is true for both GitKraken and GitHub Desktop — it is the framework cost, not a specific app problem.
What this means in practice
Install size
On disk, an Electron Git client takes roughly the same space as 10 GitSquid installs. If you keep multiple Git clients installed (most of us do during evaluation), this matters. On laptops with 256 GB SSDs, every GB freed has value.
Cold start
The 3-second difference between GitSquid and GitKraken sounds trivial. Multiplied by the number of times you launch your Git client each day (typically 5-15), it adds up to one minute per day — about 4 hours per year — spent staring at a loading screen.
RAM at idle
The 570 MB difference between GitSquid and GitKraken is the headline number for memory-constrained machines. On a 16 GB MacBook with the usual editor + browser + Slack + Docker setup, that is the difference between "I have 1.5 GB free" and "I am swapping". Swapping makes everything slower, not just the Git client.
CPU at idle
This is the metric you feel in fan noise. Electron apps often hold a small amount of background CPU even when idle (renderer processes, GPU compositor, etc.). On a fanless laptop or a hot-running Mac, even a few percent makes the difference between silent and audibly spinning.
The trade-offs
Tauri is not free of downsides. The honest list:
- Webview consistency. Each OS uses a different webview engine. Most CSS / JS works identically, but very advanced features (some flexbox edge cases, some font rendering details) can differ across platforms. We have hit and worked around 2-3 of these in GitSquid's lifetime.
- Bundling complexity. Tauri requires Rust toolchain on every developer's machine. Electron requires only Node. For a Git GUI built by a small team, this is acceptable; for a hobbyist project, it adds friction.
- Smaller community. Electron has 10+ years of resources, libraries, and Stack Overflow answers. Tauri's ecosystem is younger but growing fast.
For Git clients specifically, none of these downsides are visible to end users. The benefit (lower footprint, faster start, less memory) is.
Why don't more Git clients use Tauri?
Two reasons:
- Inertia. GitKraken started before Tauri existed. GitHub Desktop started before Tauri was production-ready. Re-platforming a mature product is expensive — we know, GitSquid did exactly that from Electron to Tauri in v2.0 (2026-04-11).
- Tauri is younger. Tauri 1.0 shipped in 2022, Tauri 2.0 in 2024. For an established product, betting on a younger framework is a real risk. For a new product like GitSquid, the trade-off is more favorable.
Try it yourself
The numbers in this article are reproducible. Install both GitSquid and any Electron-based Git client, open the same repository in both, and watch your machine's stats. The difference is usually visible without measurement.
Download GitSquid and see the numbers on your hardware.