parcel VS webpack

Compare parcel vs webpack and see what are their differences.

parcel

The zero configuration build tool for the web. πŸ“¦πŸš€ (by parcel-bundler)

webpack

A bundler for javascript and friends. Packs many modules into a few bundled assets. Code Splitting allows for loading parts of the application on demand. Through "loaders", modules can be CommonJs, AMD, ES6 modules, CSS, Images, JSON, Coffeescript, LESS, ... and your custom stuff. (by webpack)
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parcel webpack
161 311
42,713 63,561
0.2% 0.1%
9.0 9.7
5 days ago 1 day ago
JavaScript JavaScript
MIT License MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

parcel

Posts with mentions or reviews of parcel. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-09-21.
  • Bun vs Node.js: Everything you need to know
    7 projects | dev.to | 21 Sep 2023
    In the Node.js ecosystem, bundling is typically handled by third-party tools rather than Node.js itself. Some of the most popular bundlers in the Node.js world include Webpack, Rollup, and Parcel, offering features like code splitting, tree shaking, and hot module replacement.
  • JavaScript Gom Jabbar
    12 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 2 Jul 2023
    There are projects attempting to do more things. I've really enjoyed Parcel (https://parceljs.org). But it won't handle things like linting or unit testing, which you may or may not want. Vite is also pretty popular (https://vitejs.dev/), and it has a test runner.

    Thing is, most of the problems described in the post aren't related to low-JS front-end libraries like HTMX or alpine. You can write React without a linter, bundler, build tool, unit testing, or linting. But with any of these projects at scale, you start wanting more:

    - If you want to write unit tests in JS, you need to choose a test runner (probably Jest or Vitest -- until the built-in node testing module becomes more common).

    - If you want linting, you need a linter (probably Eslint). If you want type safety, you need a type checker (probably Typescript).

    - If you want to create smaller JS files to ship to production and to automatically handle assets, you need a bundler.

    - If you want to use new language features while supporting old browsers, you need polyfills.

    - If you want to use all these things together, you need something to bring it together (like Webpack).

    So it really depends what you need! You may not need any. But as you can imagine, in many professional projects with multiple developers it's very nice to have unit tests, linting, and type checking :) (And you start caring about end-user performance a lot more, in which case optimizing the shipped bundle is important.)

    Take all that, and then compare to a language like Rust, which has most of the "ecosystem stuff" built-in. In Rust, you get the test runner, the linter, dependency manager, type checker, and documentation tool all included. Easy! Thankfully, Rust doesn't have to care about whether users support modern language features (because it compiles down to lower code ahead of time), or whether the binary shipped to the client is optimally organized for downloading immediately over the internet.

    It's a problem in JS because A) you have to care about more problems than many other languages since JS needs to load instantly over the wire in a web browser, and B) there is a huge amount of choice and not a lot of standardization in web tools. (And what standardization there is (Node, npm), there are still competitors trying to even further reduce the pain points.)

    I think that in ten more years, we'll be in a better place, because there is push back (like this post!) against these problems, which will encourage more tools trying to solve the explosion of tools. Which seems counterintuitive, but these tools were created to solve very real problems. So I see it as a pendulum which has swung too far, but will likely swing back to a more balanced place. And you see that with tools like Vite gaining popularity.

  • How To Secure Your JavaScript Applications
    11 projects | dev.to | 14 Jun 2023
    Bundling: Webpack, Parcel, Rollup
  • 5 Different Tools to Bundle Node.js Apps
    8 projects | dev.to | 13 Jun 2023
    Parcel is another popular bundler you can use to bundle Node.js applications. Unlike Webpack, you do not need to write additional configurations with Parcel since it is a zero-configuration bundler. It is capable of automatically detecting and bundling project dependencies.
  • [AskJS] Seeking a Shortcut or Program to Toggle 'Active State' Between Two Monitors on a Mac Mini
    3 projects | /r/javascript | 23 May 2023
    Parcel
  • It looks like create-react-app is dead. What should I use instead?
    2 projects | /r/reactjs | 24 Apr 2023
    I love https://parceljs.org/.
    2 projects | /r/reactjs | 24 Apr 2023
    I've started to use parcel for all my projects: https://parceljs.org/
  • Live preview of vanilla CSS as I change it?
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Apr 2023
    The simplest solution might be to use parcel https://parceljs.org/

    > The zero configuration build tool for the web.

  • How are you building React applications? It's time to move on from Create React App
    13 projects | dev.to | 12 Apr 2023
    What about rolling your own? Most people that have only ever used CRA, Next.js, or similar tools will think that seems like a lot of work. In the past, it usually did require quite a bit of knowledge about webpack, so you aren't wrong. But tooling has come a long way, and tools like Parcel, NX, and Razzle have simplified the process. Even more recently, Vite has gained an ever-increasing market share.
  • JavaScript Module Bundlers and all that Jazz ✨
    6 projects | dev.to | 26 Mar 2023
    Parcel is a popular zero configuration build tool for the web. Some of its popular features include -

webpack

Posts with mentions or reviews of webpack. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-09-28.
  • Run Bun Run! Building an AWS CDK Template with Bun
    4 projects | dev.to | 28 Sep 2023
    The famous bundler is Webpack, but esbuild is the fastest one… Well, until Bun πŸ”
  • Bun vs Node.js: Everything you need to know
    7 projects | dev.to | 21 Sep 2023
    In the Node.js ecosystem, bundling is typically handled by third-party tools rather than Node.js itself. Some of the most popular bundlers in the Node.js world include Webpack, Rollup, and Parcel, offering features like code splitting, tree shaking, and hot module replacement.
  • Modern VS Code extension development: The basics
    4 projects | dev.to | 14 Sep 2023
    The best way to accomplish this is through bundling. Microsoft recommends utilizing esbuild for bundling your VS Code extensions due to its speed and efficiency. webpack is another good alternative.
  • The Ascent of Node.js: How a runtime changed the Web
    14 projects | dev.to | 30 Aug 2023
    Growth in Tooling: Tools like Babel allowed developers to use the latest JavaScript features without waiting for Node.js support, while Webpack streamlined bundling and module loading.
  • Getting out of a rut
    4 projects | /r/webdev | 18 Aug 2023
    Study these technologies for a frontend web developer role: React, Node.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Webpack, and Jest.
  • Add Authentication to Any Web Page in 10 Minutes
    4 projects | dev.to | 8 Aug 2023
    To keep the demo simple, we do not use a package manager such as Webpack, we will retrieve the Authgear Web SDK from Authgear's CDN using IIFE(Immediately-invoked Function Expression) bundle. We can reference a script in our HTML directly:
  • Building a JSON Parser from scratch with JS 🀯
    7 projects | dev.to | 1 Aug 2023
    A parser can have various applications in everyday life, and you probably use some parser daily. Babel, webpack, eslint, prettier, and jscodeshift. All of them, behind the scenes, run a parser that manipulates an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) to do what you need - we'll talk about that later, don't worry.
  • A webpack.config.js for WordPress Projects
    6 projects | dev.to | 31 Jul 2023
    webpack
    6 projects | dev.to | 31 Jul 2023
    Webpack is a free and open-source module bundler based on Node.js for JavaScript. It is very "famous" in the modern javascript frameworks world, and although it was made primarily for JavaScript, it also can transform front-end assets such as CSS, and images if the corresponding loaders are included (this is the reason I will be using so many dependencies below).
  • A Complete Guideline to Creating a Modern React App With TypeScript From Scratch
    5 projects | dev.to | 8 Jul 2023
    To get webpack working, we will need to install some dependencies.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing parcel and webpack you can also consider the following projects:

vite - Next generation frontend tooling. It's fast!

craco - Create React App Configuration Override, an easy and comprehensible configuration layer for Create React App.

esbuild - An extremely fast bundler for the web

Next.js - The React Framework

Rollup - Next-generation ES module bundler

gulp - A toolkit to automate & enhance your workflow

react-app-rewired - Override create-react-app webpack configs without ejecting

Snowpack - ESM-powered frontend build tool. Instant, lightweight, unbundled development. ✌️ [Moved to: https://github.com/FredKSchott/snowpack]