head to head · open source
parcel vs phing
parcel has 44,008 GitHub stars, 2,425 forks, 606 open issues and last shipped yesterday. phing has 1,163 stars, 318 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. parcel leads on adoption by 3,684% (44,008 vs 1,163 stars). parcel is written in JavaScript under MIT; phing is written in PHP under LGPL-3.0. parcel has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, phing 27%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| parcel | phing | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 318 |
| 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 phing if
- You want the phing feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and phing 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 phing
Thank you for using PHING! PH ing I s N ot G NU make; it's a PHP project build system or build tool based on Apache Ant. You can do anything with it that you could do with a traditional build system like GNU make, and its use of simple XML build files and extensible PHP "task" classes make it an easy to use and highly flexible build framework. Features include running PHPUnit unit tests (including test result and coverage reports), file transformations (e.g. token replacement, XSLT transformation, template transformations), file system operations, interactive build support, SQL execution, SCM operations (Git…
read the full phing overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More Build & Deployment projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Build & Deployment field.
Frequently asked questions
Is parcel or phing more popular?
parcel has 44,008 GitHub stars and phing has 1,163. parcel has the larger community by that measure.
Are parcel and phing free?
Both are open source. parcel is licensed under MIT and phing under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between parcel and phing?
parcel is written in JavaScript and phing in PHP. 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 phing?
Choose parcel if you want the larger community (44,008 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose phing if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.