Glossary

What is WebAssembly (Wasm)?

WebAssembly is a portable binary format that runs near-native-speed code in the browser and beyond, letting languages like Rust, Go, and C target the web and the edge.

Wasm is a fast, sandboxed, language-agnostic compile target. In the browser it powers heavy in-page tools; outside it, Wasm runtimes execute the same modules server-side, in plugin systems, and at the edge — even for local model inference.

Open-source Wasm runtimes and toolchains have pushed it well past its browser origins into a general portable execution layer.

Best open-source developer tools →

Trending WebAssembly (Wasm) projects

Sambigeara/pollen
Distributed WASM runtime. Workloads place themselves over a zero-trust mesh. One static binary.
★ 3700 · 24hmomentum 15Go
nuskey8/DotWasm
A WebAssembly runtime implemented in C# for .NET
★ 160 · 24hmomentum 15C#
openclaw/clawpdf
Zero-dependency PDFium WebAssembly bindings for Node and browsers.
★ 110 · 24hmomentum 14TypeScript
danmolitor/forme
PDF generation with JSX. Page breaks that actually work.
★ 1300 · 24hmomentum 7Rust
eljojo/rememory
a digital safe with multiple keys, held by people you trust
★ 1.4K0 · 24hmomentum 7Go

▌ WebAssembly (Wasm) — FAQ

What is WebAssembly (Wasm)?

WebAssembly is a portable binary format that runs near-native-speed code in the browser and beyond, letting languages like Rust, Go, and C target the web and the edge. Wasm is a fast, sandboxed, language-agnostic compile target. In the browser it powers heavy in-page tools; outside it, Wasm runtimes execute the same modules server-side, in plugin systems, and at the edge — even for local model inference.