CodePen vs MDN Playground
CodePen
codepen.ioMDN Playground
developer.mozilla.orgSide by side
| Figure | CodePen | MDN Playground |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $8/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Coding Playgrounds | 8.7 (#19) | 7.3 (#116) |
| Spec score · Code Playground Software | 8.6 (#8) | 7.5 (#38) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Intended users | CodePen describes itself as useful for developers of any skill and particularly empowering for people learning to code, as well as for prototyping, debugging, client review, hiring, and portfolios. | MDN describes Playground as a tool for web developers to experiment with code and learn from MDN examples. |
| Purpose | CodePen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers to build, test, deploy, share, and discover front-end code. | MDN Playground lets users preview HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. |
Plans
In their own words
CodePen
CodePen is a web-based social development environment for creating, testing, deploying, sharing and discovering front-end code. In a Pen, users write HTML, CSS and JavaScript and see a live browser preview. It supports HTML preprocessors such as Markdown, Haml, Slim and Pug, and CSS preprocessors including Sass, Less, Stylus and PostCSS. The CodePen 2.0 editor supports automatic preprocessing, live previews, file systems, version history, collaboration and one-click Pen deployment. Users can add external CSS and JavaScript resources, reuse other Pens, find libraries through CDNjs and import bare npm packages through its compiler. Pens can be embedded on other websites, and CodePen documents a REST API and other embed and prefill options. Pens and Projects are public by default. PRO users can make Pens and Collections private, but anyone with the shared URL can view them without logging in. The free plan includes unlimited public Pens and three files per Pen. Starter costs $8 a month, Developer $12 a month and Super $26 a month. CodePen does not offer a self-hosted version.
MDN Playground
MDN Playground has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.