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CodePen VS Purgecss

Compare CodePen VS Purgecss and see what are their differences

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CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.

Purgecss logo Purgecss

Easily remove unused CSS
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Purgecss Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-28

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

Purgecss features and specs

  • Reduced File Size
    PurgeCSS analyzes your CSS files and removes unused selectors, significantly reducing the size of your CSS files, leading to faster load times.
  • Performance Improvement
    By eliminating unnecessary CSS, PurgeCSS can improve the performance of your website, as there is less CSS for the browser to parse and execute.
  • Enhanced Maintainability
    With PurgeCSS, your CSS becomes cleaner and more manageable, making it easier for developers to maintain and update.
  • Integration
    PurgeCSS can be easily integrated into build tools like Webpack, Gulp, and Grunt, allowing seamless automation in the development workflow.
  • Customizability
    PurgeCSS offers configuration options that allow developers to specify content sources, safelisting of selectors, and more, making it highly customizable.

Possible disadvantages of Purgecss

  • Configuration Complexity
    Setting up PurgeCSS may require a detailed configuration to correctly identify which CSS selectors are in use, which can be complex for larger projects.
  • Potential Removal of Used Styles
    If not configured properly, PurgeCSS might accidentally remove dynamic classes generated by JavaScript or conditional rendering, affecting the functionality of the site.
  • Initial Setup Time
    The initial setup and integration process can be time-consuming, especially for projects with a large codebase or complex structure.
  • Limited Dynamic Content Handling
    PurgeCSS may struggle with highly dynamic sites where CSS classes are generated at runtime, requiring careful management or additional tools to ensure accuracy.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers may need to spend additional time learning how to effectively use PurgeCSS, especially if they are new to the tool or similar CSS management solutions.

CodePen videos

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Purgecss videos

How to use PurgeCSS to Remove Unused CSS Classes from Tailwind CSS, Bootstrap, and more!

More videos:

  • Review - Gatsby.js with Tailwind CSS and PurgeCSS

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CodePen and Purgecss)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Programming
100 100%
0% 0
Design Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CodePen and Purgecss

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.

Purgecss Reviews

We have no reviews of Purgecss yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodePen seems to be a lot more popular than Purgecss. While we know about 503 links to CodePen, we've tracked only 36 mentions of Purgecss. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CodePen mentions (503)

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Purgecss mentions (36)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing CodePen and Purgecss, you can also consider the following products

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

CSS Peeper - Smart CSS viewer tailored for Designers.

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

Unused CSS - Easily find and remove unused CSS rules