SASS vs LESS: A Comparison Between These Two CSS Preprocessors

Compare SASS and LESS directly to understand which is the best choice for your CSS development. This guide explores the differences to help you make the best choice for your project.

Published

20/03/2024

Reading Time

6 min

SASS (Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets) and LESS are two of the most popular CSS preprocessors, offering advanced features like variables, mixins, functions, and nesting that go beyond traditional CSS limitations.

SASS: Features and Advantages

SASS, originally written in Ruby but now available in various implementations, is a preprocessor that extends CSS syntax, allowing developers to use features like variables, nesting architecture, and mixins in a more intuitive and powerful way

CSS

// SASS Example
$primary-color: #3498db;

.button {
  background-color: $primary-color;
  &:hover {
    background-color: darken($primary-color, 10%);
  }
}

CSS

// SASS Example
$primary-color: #3498db;

.button {
  background-color: $primary-color;
  &:hover {
    background-color: darken($primary-color, 10%);
  }
}

This example shows how SASS facilitates the use of variables and functions (like darken to darken a color) and nesting to define pseudo-selectors, making code cleaner and more maintainable

LESS: Features and Advantages

LESS, similar to SASS, is a CSS preprocessor that allows you to write CSS more efficiently, introducing variables, mixins, functions, and nesting architecture. Unlike SASS, LESS is written in JavaScript and can run both client-side and server-side.

CSS

// LESS Example
@primary-color: #3498db;

.button {
  background-color: @primary-color;
  &:hover {
    background-color: darken(@primary-color, 10%);
  }
}

CSS

// LESS Example
@primary-color: #3498db;

.button {
  background-color: @primary-color;
  &:hover {
    background-color: darken(@primary-color, 10%);
  }
}

The example illustrates how LESS offers similar features to SASS, improving CSS development efficiency with tools like variables and functions for color manipulation

SASS vs LESS: Comparison

Syntax: SASS offers two syntaxes: SASS (indentation-sensitive) and SCSS (more similar to traditional CSS), while LESS uses CSS-like syntax that may be more familiar to new users
Performance: Performance differences between SASS and LESS are generally minimal for most projects. SASS, however, has shown in some cases to be slightly faster in compilation
Ecosystem and Community: Both SASS and LESS enjoy a wide user community and a rich ecosystem of tools and plugins. However, SASS has gained greater popularity in recent years, with more frameworks and libraries adopting it as their default preprocessor