Parcel vs Rollup
Parcel
parceljs.org
Rollup
rollupjs.orgSide by side
| Figure | Parcel | Rollup |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 0 |
| Spec score · JavaScript Build Tools | 7.8 (#10) | 7.3 (#20) |
| Integrations | Parcel documents integrations with React Fast Refresh and Vue hot reloading, and supports Yarn, pnpm, and npm for automatic dependency installation. | The site says Vite pre-configures Rollup with defaults and plugins, and names WMR as a project that adopted its plugin API. |
| Purpose | Parcel is a zero configuration build tool for the web. | Rollup is a JavaScript module bundler that compiles smaller code modules into libraries or applications. |
| Support | Parcel links to community support through Discord and publishes documentation and a GitHub repository. | The Rollup site links to a chat channel and to Open Collective for project contributions. |
In their own words
Parcel
Parcel is a free, open source, zero-configuration build tool for web projects. It handles HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, Flow, images, fonts, videos, Sass, SVG, Vue, Node, Electron, GraphQL, MDX, XML and other file types out of the box. It can automatically install plugins and development dependencies for additional file types. For development, Parcel includes an HTTPS server with an API proxy and automatically updates code in the browser, with React Fast Refresh and Vue hot-reloading integrations. Terminal and browser diagnostics include syntax-highlighted code frames, hints and documentation links. Production features include tree shaking, minification, image optimization, code splitting, content hashing, and Gzip and Brotli compression. Builds use worker threads and caching, with lazy development builds also supported. Parcel can target declared browser environments, handle workers, build libraries for multiple targets and build monorepos with one command. A plugin system and programmatic API support customization and integration into existing build systems. Its development server builds only one target at a time and defaults to a modern browser target; compression is not enabled by default.