Alternatives to GNU Parallel
A command-line utility that runs shell commands and scripts in parallel across CPU cores or machines. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
GNU Parallel
A command-line utility that runs shell commands and scripts in parallel across CPU cores or machines.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as GNU Parallel.
moreutils
A collection of small general-purpose Unix command-line tools such as sponge, chronic and ifne.
moreutils includes a smaller parallel command that differs from GNU Parallel, bundled with other utilities such as sponge, and it cannot spread work across machines.
Pueue
A command-line task manager that queues shell commands and runs them in the background.
Pueue queues shell commands in a background daemon with configurable parallelism and task groups, but runs tasks only on the local machine, not across several machines.
mprocs
A terminal UI tool that runs several commands in parallel and shows each one's output separately.
mprocs runs several commands in parallel with separate output panes in a terminal UI, aimed at dev servers rather than batch jobs across many inputs.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
hyperfine
A benchmarking tool for shell commands that does the statistics properly: warmup runs, multiple samples and outlier detection.
entr
Runs a command whenever the files you pipe into it change.
watchexec
Watches a folder and reruns a command whenever a file changes, for test loops, linting and rebuilds.
Just
A command runner that saves project-specific commands in a justfile, without any of make's build-system baggage.
Pipe Viewer
A terminal tool, pv, that shows progress, throughput and time remaining for data in a pipeline.
