Choosing your front-end package manager

Introduction

In front-end development, a package manager is a tool that helps install, upgrade, configure, and remove external packages (dependencies) for your project.

Quite a few front-end package managers are available, each with its own developer community and unique set of features. The choice of a specific package manager can affect the installation speeds, package resolution efficiency, and ease of managing your project. Currently, the most popular front-end package managers are NPM, Yarn, and PNPM.

In this post, we'll try to determine which one might better fit your needs.

How are they similar?

Top 4 similarities between NPM, Yarn, and PNPM package managers

• Dependency management — all of them manage project dependencies, ensuring that the correct versions of packages are resolved and installed.
• Package registry — all of them use the NPM registry to fetch packages from.
• Semantic versioning — all of them support semantic versioning, which helps specify and resolve package versions correctly.
• CLI Tools — each manager comes with a command-line interface (CLI) that executes various useful commands.

How are they different?

A visualization of the top 3 differences between NPM, Yarn, and PNPM package managers

👉 NPM (Node Package Manager)

• Speed and performance — it is traditionally slower than others due to its nested dependency structure (even though it has improved significantly in speed with recent updates).

• Architecture — it installs dependencies in a nested folder structure, which can lead to a larger node_modules folder and potential issues with deeply nested dependencies.

• Additional capabilities — it has integrated several useful features over time, including security audits and an improved npm ci command for faster, more reliable installs.

Link to docs

👉 Yarn

• Speed and performance — it was created by Facebook to address performance issues with that came with using NPM. It uses a parallel installation process, making it much faster than older versions of NPM.

• Architecture — it uses a flat dependency structure to avoid duplication of packages, which made the size of the node_modules folder smaller and resolved issues related to having a lot of nested dependencies.

• Additional capabilities — it has a couple of extra features like workspaces for monorepo management, deterministic installs (ensuring the same node_modules structure across environments), and a yarn.lock file that ensures consistent dependency versions across environments and developer machines.

Link to docs

👉 PNPM (Performant NPM)

• Speed and performance — it uses a unique approach to installing dependencies by creating a global store for all package versions, and linking them into the project's node_modules. This feature makes it known for its speed and efficient use of disk space.

• Architecture — instead of duplicating dependencies across projects, it uses symlinks to reference packages. This approach decreases disk space usage and significantly improves installation times.

• Additional capabilities — it supports advanced monorepo features through workspaces that ensure that packages are not resolved by accident from neighboring monorepo projects.

Link to docs

Conclusion

Choosing the right package manager depends mostly on the size of your project, as well as any additional requirements you might have.

🐠 For small pet projects

For simple projects that do not require any advanced features, NPM is often a good choice. It comes out of the box with node.js and makes starting a new project really easy. Its recent performance improvements make it a good fit for small applications and pet projects.

🐋 For large and complex applications

For larger projects, a good choice might be Yarn — it supports workspaces, has deterministic installs, and is based on a flat dependency structure that can prevent many common issues related to dependency management.

On the other hand, I am also a huge fan of PNPM — its unique linking system ensures that dependencies are handled correctly, making it a great fit for monorepos with many applications and dependencies.

Understanding the similarities and differences of each package manager can help you figure out which might the best option for your next project!