BenchRank
#33 in Frameworks & LibrariesUpdated 2026-08

Electron

by Electron · Cross-platform desktop apps built with JavaScript, HTML and CSS

BenchRank score

52.1 — BenchRank score out of 100

Screenshots of Electron

Homepage · Electron

Homepage of Electron

Overview

Electron embeds Chromium and Node.js so desktop applications can be built with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Main-process APIs handle windows, menus, dialogs and notifications, with modules for automatic updates via Squirrel and crash reporting. Electron Forge scaffolds, builds and publishes apps; Electron Fiddle runs small experiments.

Best for
Web developers building desktop apps for macOS, Windows and Linux from one JavaScript codebase.
Pricing
No prices are shown; the page describes Electron as an open-source project installed from npm.
Runs on
WebAndroidmacOSWindowsLinuxSelf-hosted

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

  • Runs on macOS, Windows and Linux from one codebase
  • Embeds Chromium and Node.js; any npm package or native add-on
  • Built-in autoUpdater, crash reporting and native GUI APIs
  • Open source under the OpenJS Foundation

Trade-offs

  • Each app bundles a full Chromium and Node.js runtime
  • autoUpdater covers macOS and Windows only, not Linux
  • Installer generation relies on community-supported tooling
  • Major releases track Chromium, so upgrades come often

How Electron markets itself

A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on Electron’s captured homepage.

Homepage capture

“Build cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS”

  • Angle: Developer-first
  • Hero: Illustration

Pricing

Published plans and prices from Electron’s own pricing page.

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

  • MCP support

    Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.

  • API quality

    Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.

  • Documentation

    Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.

  • Agent friendliness

    How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.

  • Customer sentiment

    Third-party ratings, shrunk toward the catalogue mean by review volume and corroborated across independent sources.

  • Changelog

    A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.

  • Marketing site structure

    Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.

  • Page speed

    How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.

  • Operational trust

    Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

  • Openness

    Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.

  • Maintenance

    Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.

This doesn’t look right — report a problem with Electron’s score

Where this comes from

The Electron pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.

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