Emacs binary download page pointed me to Windows, but for comparison:

141MB: emacs-30.1-nodeps.zip

75MB: emacs-30.1-installer.exe (better compression? Contents seem similar)

27MB helix-25.07-x86_64-windows.zip

So there's still an Emacs distinction, it seems

(*not that these size differences matter in practice -- helix's "bulk" is all in compiled language grammars, each of which is not loaded unless you use the language.)

(replying to myself)

Alpine package sizes:

- helix 10.3MiB (+ 3 dependencies: musl, libgcc, sh)

- emacs 14.5MiB (+ 1 dependency: musl)

- neovim 18.7MiB (+ 9 dependencies musl, lua, tree-sitter, libint, libluv, unibilium, utf8proc, libuv, libluajit))

So it doesn't seem out of the ordinary for popular cli editors, if you're worried about smaller environments.