A 100x faster* alternative to homebrew

zerobrew brings uv-style architecture to Homebrew packages on macOS and Linux.

curl -fsSL https://zerobrew.rs/install | bash

The installer updates your shell config. After it finishes, restart your terminal or run the source command it prints.

brew install zerobrewhq/zerobrew/zerobrew

Update zerobrew

If you used the standalone installer, rerun it:

curl -fsSL https://zerobrew.rs/install | bash zb --version

If you installed with Homebrew:

brew update && brew upgrade zerobrew

If you installed from the old lucasgelfond/zerobrew tap, it's no longer updated. Switch to the new one:

brew uninstall zerobrew brew untap lucasgelfond/zerobrew brew install zerobrewhq/zerobrew/zerobrew

Quick start

zb install jq # install one package zb install wget git # install multiple zb bundle # install from Brewfile zb bundle install -f myfile # install from custom file zb bundle dump # export installed packages to Brewfile zb bundle dump -f out --force # dump to custom file (overwrite) zb uninstall jq # uninstall one package zb outdated # list packages with newer versions zb upgrade # upgrade all outdated packages zb upgrade jq wget # upgrade specific packages zb reset # uninstall everything zb gc # garbage collect unused store entries zbx jq --version # run without linking

Performance snapshot

Package Homebrew (cold) ZB (cold) Cold speedup Homebrew (warm) ZB (warm) Warm speedup

Overall (100 packages) 776s 117s 6.6x 638s 9.3s 68x

python@3.14 16.99s 1.97s 8.6x 14.37s 207ms 69.4x

node 29.31s 3.16s 9.3x 28.24s 232ms 121.7x

tesseract 34.63s 2.16s 16.0x 32.37s 476ms 68.0x

openjdk 32.09s 5.17s 6.2x 26.86s 448ms 60.0x

llvm 18.22s 9.14s 2.0x 9.66s 183ms 52.8x

Measured on 2026-10-08 with zerobrew 0.3.5 (development release) and Homebrew 7.0.8 on macOS 26.6.2, MacBook Pro (M3 Pro, 18 GB RAM), ~318 Mbit/s download bandwidth. Homebrew started with nothing installed.

To reproduce, run just bench --full results/ on a machine with nothing installed in Homebrew. It resets zerobrew, uninstalls everything it installed in Homebrew, and writes a table to results/benchmark.md.

A smaller version runs in CI: the parity workflow installs a fixed set of formulae with both tools on the same runner and compares the resulting prefixes byte for byte, and the timing workflow times those formulae plus node and python@3.14, cold and warm, with both tools and with the last zerobrew release.

The nightly timing run fails if zerobrew is less than 1.5x faster than Homebrew cold or 3x warm on any of them, or more than 20% slower than the last release overall.

WRT Homebrew, I want it to be clear that both brew and zerobrew install the same bottles from Homebrew's build farm.

The difference is what happens after the download: Homebrew runs Ruby to evaluate the formula, unpacks, rewrites paths with install_name_tool, and re-signs each binary one at a time, while zerobrew does the relocation in-process and links from a content-addressed store, so it pays for the download once and almost nothing after.

I want it to be clear that we are basically nothing without Homebrew's bottle build farm. Every package zerobrew installs is one they built, tested and published. We don't compile anything, we don't maintain formulae, and none of these numbers exist without that work. The speed comes from how the artifacts are installed, not from what's in them.

This is a good read, if you're interested in what zerobrew is and isn't: Standing on the shoulders of Homebrew by Andrew Nesbitt. It makes the point better than I can.

nanobrew’s published numbers time a “warm install” of a package that is already installed, which is an early exit, not an install, and compare against zerobrew 0.1.0.

Every number above is a real install from an uninstalled state, with the script and the full log in this repo, so you can run it yourself.

zerobrew is more of a performance-optimized client for the Homebrew ecosystem. We rely on:

zerobrew is experimental. We recommend running it alongside Homebrew rather than as a replacement, and do not recommend purging homebrew and replacing it with zerobrew unless you are absolutely sure about the implications of doing so.