clean-css/clean-css

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

4200 stars · 318 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

clean-css is a fast and efficient CSS optimizer and minifier for Node.js and modern browsers, offering multiple optimization levels, source map support, and a CLI utility. It is one of the best-performing CSS minifiers according to benchmarks, though it is now in maintenance mode.

Use cases

• minify css files for production
• optimize stylesheets to reduce page load time
• inline and process @import rules in css
• generate source maps for minified css
• rebase relative image urls in css
• batch minify multiple css files from the command line

When to choose

• you need a battle-tested, high-performance CSS minifier for Node.js or browser builds
• you want fine-grained control over optimization levels and formatting
• you need source map support and @import inlining during minification

When to avoid

• you need a tool with active feature development, since clean-css is in maintenance mode
• you want a full CSS framework or preprocessor rather than a minifier
• your build pipeline already includes a modern bundler with built-in CSS minification

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

css-framework build-tool cli web-development frontend developer-tools browser cli cross-platform css-minifier css-optimizer minification source-maps nodejs

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="clean-css/clean-css")