If you're working in JavaScript — React, Next.js, Node.js, or Vue — you've used npm. Lately, pnpm has become a serious challenger. So which one should you choose?
npm is the default and ships with Node.js. It's reliable, ubiquitous, and well-supported. The downside: a flat node_modules tree that can balloon to hundreds of megabytes per project.
pnpm uses a content-addressable store on disk. Packages are stored once globally and hard-linked into each project's node_modules. The result: dramatically less disk usage, faster installs, and stricter dependency resolution that catches phantom dependencies.
For monorepos, pnpm workspaces are arguably best-in-class — fast, deterministic, and integrate cleanly with Turborepo or Nx. For single-package projects, both work fine; pick what your team is comfortable with.
At InviSofts we default to pnpm for new projects and migrate larger monorepos when the install-time savings justify the switch.
