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Elm vs Gleam: catalog facts
Elm	Gleam
Best for: Web developers who want a typed functional language for front ends	Best for: Developers who want typed functional code on the Erlang VM
Free Free and open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence.	Free Free and open source, supported by sponsors.
Windows, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Compiler error messages explain problems and suggest fixes Type inference catches runtime errors at compile time All 4 strengths for Elm Compiler error messages explain problems and suggest fixes Type inference catches runtime errors at compile time Consistent program architecture across projects Online playground for trying the language	Static types on the Erlang VM Compiler, build tool, formatter and package manager in one All 4 strengths for Gleam Static types on the Erlang VM Compiler, build tool, formatter and package manager in one Can target JavaScript as well as Erlang Access to the BEAM package ecosystem
Only targets web front ends Interop with JavaScript libraries takes extra work	Younger language with a smaller community than Erlang or Elixir
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: BSD-3-Clause	License: Apache-2.0
No account needed	No account needed
Offline features available	Offline features available
Official website Full listing and sources Sources for Elm elm-lang.org Catalog checked October 2, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Sources for Gleam gleam.run Catalog checked September 23, 2026

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