No, you don't need GraalVM either, it is only built with GraalVM, but it is usable as a single static native binary with no other dependencies. Think how say C

No, you don't need GraalVM either, it is only built with GraalVM, but it is usable as a single static native binary with no other dependencies. Think how say CPython needs GCC to build itself, but to use Python as a user you don't need GCC, only the compiled CPython interpreter. This is the same for Babashka Clojure, you only need GraalVM to build it, but as a user you only need the compiled Babashka interpreter. There's also Self-hosted Clojurescript which only needs a JS VM. And there is Clojure CLR which only needs a CLR VM. And you've got Clojerl that only needs BeamVM. But Babashka is probably the one you'd want to try, since it is dependency free, just download the binary and put it on your PATH.