head to head · open source
parcel vs farm
parcel has 44,025 GitHub stars, 2,284 forks, 606 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. farm has 5,588 stars, 190 forks, 211 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. parcel leads on adoption by 688% (44,025 vs 5,588 stars). parcel is written in JavaScript under MIT; farm is written in Rust under MIT. parcel has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, farm 3%. parcel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (build-tool, compiler), 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 | farm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-06 | 2026-06-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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 farm if
- You want the farm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and farm fits your workflow better
About parcel
Parcel is a zero configuration build tool for the web, distributed as the parcel package on npm and licensed under MIT. It lives in the JavaScript ecosystem and is written primarily in JavaScript, with its JavaScript compiler implemented in Rust for native performance. The project has been developed for roughly nine years, carries more than 44,000 stars and over 2,200 forks on GitHub, and its documentation is hosted at parceljs.org.
read the full parcel overview →
About farm
Farm is a web build tool written in Rust and distributed under the MIT license. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript frontend tooling ecosystem, where it sits alongside bundlers such as webpack and Vite, and it is designed to be compatible with Vite so that existing plugins can be reused. The project is hosted on GitHub, has reached a 1.0 stable release that the README describes as production ready, and ships with documentation and an online playground at farmfe.org.
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Frequently asked questions
Is parcel or farm more popular?
parcel has 44,025 GitHub stars and farm has 5,588. parcel has the larger community by that measure.
Are parcel and farm free?
Both are open source. parcel is licensed under MIT and farm under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between parcel and farm?
parcel is written in JavaScript and farm in Rust. 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 farm?
Choose parcel if you want the larger community (44,025 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose farm if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.