Hybrid electric vehicles require an adequate energy management strategy in order to actually optimize their consumption. Many real-time controls were recently proposed in literature, but as each study is performed in a specific context, it is difficult to compare their efficiencies. The present paper proposes a comparison between 3 recent promising real-time strategies: adaptive equivalent consumption minimization strategy (A-ECMS), optimal control law (OCL) and stochastic dynamic programming (SDP). Two off-line methods are used as benchmark: Pontryagin's minimum principle (PMP) and dynamic programming (DP). They have the best performance in fuel saving while the other three are near-optimal strategies. Simulation results of a parallel HEV show 5% to 18% fuel economy, compared to a conventional vehicle.