Parcel vs webpack

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.

webpack is a free, open-source static module bundler for modern JavaScript applications. It builds a dependency graph and combines modules into bundles, with code splitting for on-demand loading. Built-in support covers JavaScript, JSON, WebAssembly, CSS and HTML. Loaders transform sources such as Sass into CSS or TypeScript into JavaScript, while plugins customize compilation through lifecycle hooks. ModuleFederationPlugin lets independently built applications share modules at runtime. Since version 4.0.0, webpack can run without a configuration file, although it remains highly configurable. Interfaces include the CLI, Node API, loader API and plugin API, and documentation covers integrations with Browserify, Brunch, Grunt, Gulp, Mocha and Karma. The project recommends local npm installation and a fresh Node.js installation; command-line use from webpack v4 onward also requires webpack-cli. The MIT-licensed software supports tree shaking and source maps. CSP is not enabled by default, and native CSS and HTML support are experimental.