When comparing Parallels Desktop vs Better Touch Tool, the Slant community recommends Better Touch Tool for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” Better Touch Tool is ranked 32nd while Parallels Desktop is ranked 59th.
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Pros
Pro Best-in-class gaming performance
Compared to other VMs, Parallels has the best gaming performance. Still, a good framerate can only be achieved with games that have very low resource requirements. A much better option for resource intensive games is dual booting Windows (via Boot Camp).
Pro Easy to use
Parallels has an easy to learn and use UI. All important features are wizard based. It requires only a few clicks for the wizard to download and set up the latest Chrome OS, Windows or Linux build.
Pro Can run Windows apps as native OS X apps
Parallels has a "Coherence View" mode that allows running Windows applications as if they were native OS X apps. In this mode Windows is virtualized in background and Windows features like Jump Lists, Taskbar, Start Menu, etc can be embedded directly within OS X.
Pro Best integration ever
Pro Endlessly customizable
Pro Extendability
Allows user to extend my MBP with touchbar by creating custom actions per app. Also supports system-wide integration (touchbar actions).
Pro BTT makes it simple to sync your hotkey, Touch Bar and gesture setup between several machines
Pro Sync settings in the cloud
Pro There's a free companion app for iOS that you can use to remote control your Mac
Pro Supports Apple script, bash, javascript
Pro Customize window button behaviour
Pro Make your own menu bar items
Pro Active community
Pro Built-in clipboard manager
Pro Highly configurable window moving / window snapping options
Pro Key sequences
Supports key sequences for things like text expansion.
Pro Supports MIDI devices (keyboards, DAW controllers, etc.)
Listen for MIDI events and have them control anything. For example you could use a DJ controller in your favorite video editor, etc.
Pro Lets you configure your external mouse's 4th and 5th button per app
Pro Record gestures / drawings and assign them to actions
Pro Developer is regularly adding features / improvements
Cons
Con Very expensive
Parallels upgrades are very expensive. Even if I bough several versions of Parallels I will switch back to free VirtualBox as they even "invented" the Pro version - mainly doubled the price you have to pay each year to have the software updated.
Con Can't import OVA files
OVA files are useful because they include all of its supporting files. Unfortunately, Parallels doesn't support these useful files.
Con Requires buying a new version of the software with each new OS X release
Chances are that the same version of Parallels won't work with different OS X releases, requiring a separate purchase of Parallels for each OS X version.
Con Home edition doesn't work with Vagrant or Docker Machine
Make sure you purchase the Pro edition (the subscription) if you need command-line access to the hypervisor.
Con Can't export OVA files
One you use parallel you get trapped into a proprietary format.
Can't share disk blocks on two unrelated virtual machines (KSM for disk) too.