Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Autoprefixer vs Less: What are the differences?
What is Autoprefixer? PostCSS plugin to parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to CSS rules. It is a CSS post processor. It combs through compiled CSS files to add or remove vendor prefixes like -webkit and -moz after checking the code.
What is Less? The dynamic stylesheet language. Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.
Autoprefixer and Less can be categorized as "CSS Pre-processors / Extensions" tools.
Less is an open source tool with 16.1K GitHub stars and 3.45K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Less's open source repository on GitHub.
Typeform, Myntra, and Avocode are some of the popular companies that use Less, whereas Autoprefixer is used by Startae, Brigade, and Clippings. Less has a broader approval, being mentioned in 649 company stacks & 883 developers stacks; compared to Autoprefixer, which is listed in 6 company stacks and 11 developer stacks.
Pros of Autoprefixer
Pros of Less
- Better than css215
- Variables177
- Mixins141
- Maintainable99
- Used by bootstrap79
- Open source56
- Extendable50
- Functions43
- Dynamic39
- Fast30
- CSS is valid LESS, very easy to pick up2