So Teal is to Lua as TypeScript is to JavaScript. Which means it automatically plays well with any Lua environment. Unlike luau and nelua which are also statically typed but have their own runtimes.
What version of Lua does it use? Lua gets new versions every few years so I don't know why so many impls don't continuously upgrade to the latest version.
It's got an awesome C API. It's fast, lightweight, and embeddable. It's more performant than Python. It's a staple in video game scripting.
Semantically, Lua is almost identical to the core of JavaScript. Metatables are a genius alternative to prototype chains.
Lua's syntax is beautifully simple and unambiguous, but at the cost of being moderately inconvenient in 2025 unfortunately. It could benefit from an ESNext-style renewal.
I get why they made the C API that way, but in practice it's very easy to get wrong.
I'm not sure how fast vanilla Lua is today compared to similar languages. I think LuaJIT (and Luau?) are most often used when performance is needed.
yuescript, from the dora-ssr game engine dev, is essentially moonscript-2.0
And of course, if you want to treat lua as the scheme-like it really is (deep down), then ... fennel.
Lots of choices. They all compile to straightforward lua, are very easy to incorporate (you can even compile at runtime, if you wish), and all employ full lua semantics, meaning zero runtime overhead
EDIT: and the curse of not reading fully ahead strikes again (doh!). Someone else has made the same points below ...