head to head · open source
parcel vs captain
parcel has 44,008 GitHub stars, 2,425 forks, 606 open issues and last shipped yesterday. captain has 775 stars, 48 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. parcel leads on adoption by 5,578% (44,008 vs 775 stars). parcel is written in JavaScript under MIT; captain is written in Go under MIT. parcel has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, captain 6%. parcel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (build-tool), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| parcel | captain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 775 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 48 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick parcel if
- You weight community size — 44K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick captain if
- You want the captain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and captain fits your workflow better
About parcel
Parcel is a zero configuration build tool for the web. It combines a great out of the box development experience with a scalable architecture that can take your project from just getting started to massive production application. Features 😍 Zero config – Parcel supports many languages and file types out of the box, from web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to assets like images, fonts, videos, and more. It has a built in dev server with hot reloading, beautiful error diagnostics, and much more. No configuration needed! ⚡️ Lightning fast – Parcel's JavaScript compiler is written in Rust for native…
read the full parcel overview →
About captain
Introduction Captain Convert your Git workflow to Docker containers ready for Continuous Delivery Define your workflow in the captain.yaml and use captain to your Continuous Delivery service to create containers for each commit, test them and push them to your registry only when tests passes. Use captain build to build your Dockerfile(s) of your repository. If your repository has local changes the containers will only be tagged as latest , otherwise the containers will be tagged as latest , COMMIT ID & BRANCH NAME . Now your Git commit tree is reproduced in your local docker repository. Use captain test to run…
read the full captain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is parcel or captain more popular?
parcel has 44,008 GitHub stars and captain has 775. parcel has the larger community by that measure.
Are parcel and captain free?
Both are open source. parcel is licensed under MIT and captain under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between parcel and captain?
parcel is written in JavaScript and captain in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, parcel or captain?
Choose parcel if you want the larger community (44,008 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose captain if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.