Screeps vs Bitburner
Updated 26 Oct 2026
Screeps and Bitburner are the two best-known games played entirely in JavaScript, and people often ask which to pick. They feel very different: Screeps is a multiplayer strategy world where your code competes with everyone else's around the clock; Bitburner is a single-player idle game about automating a hacker's career at your own pace.
Side by side
| Screeps | Bitburner | |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Multiplayer strategy, persistent world | Single-player idle and hacking |
| Your code | Runs every game tick, controlling every unit | Scripts that hack servers and grow your income |
| Other players | Yes: territory, trade and war | No |
| Price | Paid | Free and open source |
| Pace | Constant; your colony lives while you sleep | Your own; progress waits for you |
| Best for | Long-term competitive programming | Learning JavaScript automation calmly |
Screeps
Your colony runs on code: every creep, spawn and tower obeys the JavaScript you upload, within a CPU budget. Other players share the world, so architecture matters, bugs cost you territory, and a good codebase becomes a long-running project. It's a real software engineering exercise disguised as a strategy game.
Bitburner
You start as a small-time hacker in a cyberpunk city and automate everything with scripts: scanning servers, hacking them, growing money and buying upgrades. Each reset unlocks new mechanics, so you keep rewriting your code. It's free, open source and very friendly to people learning JavaScript.
Verdict
Learning JavaScript or want to play solo: Bitburner. Want your code to compete with other people's and don't mind a long project: Screeps. Plenty of players do both. More like these in bot arenas and JavaScript games.