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PostCSS VS cssnano

Compare PostCSS VS cssnano and see what are their differences

PostCSS logo PostCSS

Increase code readability. Add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from Can I Use. Autoprefixer will use the data based on current browser popularity and property support to apply prefixes for you.

cssnano logo cssnano

A modular minifier, based on the PostCSS ecosystem. Created by @ben_eb.
  • PostCSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-19
  • cssnano Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-21

PostCSS features and specs

  • Modularity
    PostCSS is built around plugins, which means you can choose the exact features you need and avoid bloat. This modularity offers high customizability.
  • Performance
    PostCSS is known for its fast performance owing to its efficient processing and the ability to use only required plugins.
  • Large ecosystem
    With a vast set of available plugins, PostCSS can achieve a wide range of functionality, from linting and vendor prefixing to advanced CSS transformations.
  • Active community
    An active open-source community continuously maintains and updates PostCSS and its plugins, ensuring long-term support and innovation.
  • Integration
    PostCSS can be easily integrated into various build systems such as Webpack, Gulp, and Grunt, making it highly versatile in different development environments.

Possible disadvantages of PostCSS

  • Learning curve
    Given its flexibility and the need to configure and choose among many plugins, PostCSS can have a steeper learning curve for beginners.
  • Plugin dependencies
    Relying on multiple plugins can lead to dependency management issues, and possible conflicts between plugins if not carefully handled.
  • Configuration overhead
    Setting up PostCSS might require more initial configuration effort compared to some integrated solutions which provide out-of-the-box functionality.
  • Plugin quality variance
    The quality and maintenance of available plugins can vary, with some plugins being outdated or less reliable than others.
  • Lack of opinionation
    PostCSS's unopinionated nature means it requires developers to have a clear understanding of their needs, potentially leading to inconsistencies in plugin choices if used across different projects.

cssnano features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

PostCSS videos

UnCSS your CSS! Removing Unused CSS with PostCSS & Parcel

More videos:

  • Review - Terry Smith – Keep your CSS simple with postcss and tailwind
  • Review - #1 PostCSS Обзор

cssnano videos

No cssnano videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to PostCSS and cssnano)
Developer Tools
91 91%
9% 9
CSS Framework
87 87%
13% 13
Design Tools
90 90%
10% 10
Development Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, PostCSS should be more popular than cssnano. It has been mentiond 45 times since March 2021. 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.

PostCSS mentions (45)

  • Desktop apps for Windows XP in 2025
    Fortunately we have tools like PostCSS and Babel, that let you target your specific Browser version, and they'll do their best to transpile and polyfill your code to work with that version. This alone will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you if you are working with a lot of code. However, if you are just writing out a few HTML, CSS, and JS files, then that would be overkill and you can just figure out what code... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Improving Code Quality with Linting
    For example, linting CSS can be beneficial in cases where you need to support legacy browsers. Downgrading JavaScript is pretty common, but it's not always as simple for CSS. Using a linter allows you to be honest with yourself by flagging problematic lines that won't work in older environments, ensuring your pages look as good as possible for everyone. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • 30+ CSS libraries and frameworks help you style your applications efficiently.
    PostCSS PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JavaScript plugins. These plugins can lint your CSS, support variables and mixins, transpile future CSS syntax, inline images, and more. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Webpack Performance Tuning: Minimizing Build Times for Large Projects
    PostCSS is essential to the frontend ecosystem, with 69,473,603 downloads per week, it is bigger than all the above libraries mentioned, and has many features other than polyfilling, it is used by all the frameworks like Next.js, Svelte, Vue, and Tailwind under the hood. LightningCSS, created by the maintainer of another bundler Parcel, and written in Rust, is an excellent alternative. It provides all the... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • CSS Variable Naming: Best Practices and Approaches
    Stylelint: A modern, flexible linter for CSS that can be configured to check variable consistency. PostCSS: A tool that transforms CSS with plugins, including variable checks. CSS Linter: A specific tool to ensure correct and consistent use of CSS variables. Conclusion 🔗. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

cssnano mentions (5)

  • How to Optimize CSS for Faster Page Load Speed
    This approach improves your [Core Web Vitals](https://web.dev/vitals/)—specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). --- ### 3. Minify Your CSS Minifying your CSS removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and redundant code. Use tools like: - [cssnano](https://cssnano.co/) - [CleanCSS](https://www.cleancss.com/css-minify/). - Source: dev.to / 17 days ago
  • Maximize Web Performance with CSS Optimization Techniques
    Minifying your CSS involves removing unnecessary whitespace, comments, and reducing property names. This results in smaller file sizes and faster downloads. Use tools like UglifyCSS and CSSNano for this purpose. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Classic Themes with Block Patterns in WordPress
    For the sake of simplicity, my example setup uses a single-file plugin and puts all styles directly into a single style.css file without using further theme.css or theme.json files, which we might want to use depending on the requirements for customizability. Likewise, SASS / SCSS support can be added if it makes life easier for the developer(s) involved. But as we already use PostCSS to control autoprefixing and... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • How to auto-prefix and minify CSS?
    The cssnano plugin can minify/compress CSS and make it suitable for production use. Install cssnano plugin using this command:. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • CSS: is there any tool our there that cleans up your css file?
    I'd look through the available postcss plugins. Many of them will do what you are looking for, or at least parts of what you are looking for. For example CSSNANO is a css minifier. Source: almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing PostCSS and cssnano, you can also consider the following products

Sass - Syntatically Awesome Style Sheets

Purgecss - Easily remove unused CSS

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

Bootstrap - Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and JS for popular UI components and interactions

Prettier - An opinionated code formatter

Less - Less extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. Less runs on both the server-side (with Node. js and Rhino) or client-side (modern browsers only).