A class of one‐dimensional time‐fractional parabolic differential equations with delay effects of functional type in the time component is numerically investigated in this work. To that end, a compact difference scheme is constructed for the numerical solution of those equations based on the idea of separating the current state and the prehistory function. In these terms, the prehistory function is approximated by means of an appropriate interpolation–extrapolation operator. A discrete form of the fractional Gronwall inequality is employed to provide an optimal error estimate. The existence and uniqueness of the numerical solutions, the order of approximation error for the constructed scheme, the stability and the order of convergence are mathematically investigated in this work.