[spullara]

They may be equivalent, however, the first version has the freedom to do what they wish, for example, what is represented by array may not be directly iterable or it may be filtered. Precompilation is available in a variety of languages for mustache, including js.

IMOH, handlebars is a lazy version of mustache where the developer using it sacrifices maintainability and encapsulation. Which is probably ok for most apps that don't grow beyond a single developer.