20 Best NodeJS Packages to Develop Awesome Apps in 2025

NodeJS is one of the most popular backend platforms in the market today. It has awesome features like non-blocking IO, event-driven request processing, and many more, which has made it the number one choice for modern app development. 

It also has a large and super active community that is concerned with making the developer experience awesome. The community develops new features and extensive libraries that can be used to add functionality to NodeJS apps easily. You can find all the latest libraries and features on the NPM website, which is the biggest repository for packages in the JavaScript world. 

With so many libraries to choose from, it can get pretty difficult to select the best option, and this can delay development, too. But worry not; we are here with a list of the best Nodejs npm packages that you can use to develop awesome modern apps faster.

NodeJS is loved by many companies as the apps developed in it can reduce loading time by 50% or more. Apart from that, there are 6.3 million websites that are powered by NodeJS which highlights the popularity of this framework.

Most Downloaded NPM Packages

Out of all the different NPM packages available, we have compiled a list of 20 top nodejs packages across different use cases that can help your teams develop, test, and deploy awesome high-performance nodeJS applications for production usage. You can trust our listed packages, as they are tried and tested in our production use cases for customers across the globe. 

Table for the below-mentioned 20 Node Packages 

Top 20 NodeJS Packages You can Use in your Apps

Lodash

Lodash is a NodeJS package that makes coding in NodeJS easier, faster, and much more efficient. It provides utility functions that can be used to work with arrays, objects, and other functions. Below are some of lodash’s features.

• You can perform array manipulation like flattening, splitting, difference of arrays, etc.
• You can perform string manipulation like converting string cases, escaping characters, etc.
• You can manipulate objects, assign them properties, get and set key items, merge objects, etc.
• It provides collection manipulation features like map, filter, reduce, groupBy, etc.
• It allows method chaining and performance optimization for multiple operations. 

Code Example of Lodash

const result = _.chain([1, 2, 3])

   .map(x => x * 2)

   .filter(x => x > 2)

   .value();

Lodash is a utility library, and you don’t need a special case to use it in your project. If you are working with different objects and arrays, you should use this library as it is faster and more efficient than in-built operations of the language. 

Moment

If you want to build a global app, you will need to work with different timezones, parse them, and also manipulate them. While working with dates is never easy, using Moment makes it quite straightforward. Though it is old, it has 21 Million + weekly downloads because of its reliability and features. 

• You can format dates into different formats
• You can find the relative time from a date
• You can use calendar time to add or subtract days from a date
• It supports multiple locales, so you can easily localize your dates on the client side
• It is the oldest and simplest JavaScript date library. 

Code example using Moment

var moment = require(‘moment’); // require

moment().format(); 

When building international apps, there are lots of date manipulation and parsing requirements to keep consistency in the data you store. This is where the Moment can help you. You can store your dates in a single format and let Moment handle the different time zones or other manipulations easily. 

Async

As the name suggests, this is a powerful utility library for working with Async JavaScript. It is useful in managing the control flow of apps and handling parallel execution, as well as sequential tasks. 

Key Features

• Handling parallel execution, async execution of multiple tasks
• Running async tasks sequentially
• Running async tasks in a waterfall approach passing one function’s output to the next
• Tasks queue to process tasks parallelly with concurrency limit
• Running async functions forever until it encounters any error

Code Example of Async

async.parallel([

  function(callback) { /* Task 1 */ },

  function(callback) { /* Task 2 */ }

], function(err, results) {

  // Handle results when all tasks complete

});

When you want to execute tasks asynchronously, parallelly, or sequentially in your NodeJS application, you should look at the Async library. It is the NodeJS package with the best support and features for async programming. 

Nodemon

Nodemon is a utility library that enhances the development process for your teams. This library brings auto-restart for your apps based on file changes. It is ideal when you are building something locally and want to keep the backend running at each change rather than restarting the NodeJS server manually every time. 

Key Features

• It can monitor files and restart the server when a file’s content changes.
• It can be customized to watch for changes in specific files, or you can also ignore files to avoid triggering changes. 
• You can enhance it by adding plugins
• It supports custom command execution 
• It can support custom file extensions to trigger changes.

Example

nodemon app.js

Nodemon is highly useful in API development, full-stack web app development, or even microservices development, as it can restart applications automatically by monitoring file changes in your projects. This improves developer productivity and helps them build and test faster.

Debug

Debug is a lightweight utility for debugging NodeJS applications on servers and browsers. By using this, you can enable or disable logging, change logging levels for your apps, debug errors, and generate application logs pretty easily. 

Key Features

• You can log messages under different namespaces, which makes searching and looking at logs easier.
• Environment-specific logging for different needs across environments
• Ability to customize log message format
• Ability to set custom log levels to filter different messages
• Lightweight and easy to set

Example

const info = require(‘debug’)(‘app:info’);

info(‘This is an info message’);

Whether you are running an application locally or in production, you need high-quality logging and debugging libraries like Debug to aggregate and look at logs for the apps. Debug is a great choice if you want a lightweight yet powerful logging library for your enterprise apps.

ESLint

ESLint is one of the most popular linters for NodeJS applications. Hire NodeJS Developers proficient with ESLint to effectively identify and fix problems in JavaScript code before running them. Moreover, it will help enforce coding styles and standards for your teams. 

Key Features

• You can customize rule configurations to enforce coding styles
• It can automatically fix common JS errors
• It can integrate with all leading IDEs easily
• It supports .eslintrc file for linting configuration
• It can be enhanced by adding more plugins for different needs

Code Example

eslint app.js

This command is used to run ESLint on a JS file. Once the command is run, it will detect errors and give you reports.

ESLint can be quite helpful to enforce coding standards for your teams by integrating the linter in your CI/CD pipeline. This will ensure consistent coding standards across the team. 

Mocha

Mocha is a NodeJS package that is used to test NodeJS apps in the browser. It provides awesome support for testing async code and flexibility in writing custom test cases that suit your app’s needs. 

Key Features

• Supports async testing 
• Flexibility to write, run, and organize custom tests
• It supports various assertion libraries, so it is easier to assert and test
• It provides test lifecycle hooks that can be used to set up environments, run tests, or perform cleanups. 
• Supports multiple test reporting tools so that test reports are easy to visualize

Code Example

const { expect } = require(‘chai’);

describe(‘Array’, () => {

 it(‘should return length of array’, () => {

    expect([1, 2, 3].length).to.equal(3);

  });

 it(‘should return first element of array’, () => {

    expect([1, 2, 3][0]).to.equal(1);

  });

});

If you want to write unit and integration tests for your apps, you need to look at Mocha. It is a versatile, customizable, easy-to-use testing library for applications written in NodeJS.

Chai

Every test you write needs assertions at the end to verify whether the test passed or failed; that is where you need chai. It is an assertion library that provides a powerful set of assertions and methods and supports different assertion styles. 

Key features

• It supports multiple assertion styles and can be used in Behavior-driven and test-driven development processes.
• It can make deep, equal comparisons. 
• It can make type assertions and error-handling assertions for tests
• You can write custom test messages in chai
• It supports adding plugins for more features

Code Example

assert.equal(result, 5);

assert.lengthOf(arr, 3);

Whether you are following a behavior-driven development approach or a test-driven development approach, chai is a good assertion library to use. Using this, you can assert your objects, arrays, or any responses efficiently and increase your test coverage.

Istanbul(nyc)

Istanbul is a code coverage NodeJS package that is used to track codebase execution during tests. This helps you know how much of your code is covered with tests and which parts are untested. It is often used with testing frameworks like Mocha, Jasmine, or Jest. 

Key Features

• It can be used through the NYC CLI 
• It measures code coverage and provides stats and metrics.
• It is cross-platform compatible
• It can also generate visual HTML reports
• It can be customized to ignore some parts of the codebase

Code Example

nyc mocha

You may write lots of tests and mocks for your application, but you also need to know that those tests cover the majority of your codebase. Istanbul can be used to get code coverage metrics and insights for your apps.

Express

Express is one of the most loved frameworks in NodeJS that is used to write robust backend solutions. It provides many great features like routing, middleware support, and simplified integrations with databases, which makes it a popular choice for modern apps. 

Key Features

• Robust routing capabilities for handling multiple requests
• Supports server-side rendering with templating engines
• It supports middleware to process incoming requests
• It can be integrated with databases using ORM tools
• It supports async operations and handles async code efficiently

Code Example

// Import the Express library

const express = require(‘express’);

// Initialize an Express application

const app = express();

// Middleware to parse JSON data

app.use(express.json());

// Define a route for the homepage

app.get(‘/’, (req, res) => {

  res.send(‘Welcome to the Express server!’);

});

// Start the server on port 3000

const PORT = 3000;

app.listen(PORT, () => {

  console.log(`Server is running on http://localhost:${PORT}`);

});

ExpressJS can be used to write REST APIs for web apps. You can create backend services for e-commerce websites, store data to databases, and also create scalable APIs for users. 

Passport

Every application needs a way to authenticate and authorize users, and what’s better than using a tried and tested library like Passport. Passport leverages a concept of strategies that are used to authenticate users, and it does not need dedicated routes in the app. It can help you authenticate users using OAuth or federated authentication using OpenID. Here are some key features of this library

• Authentication middleware, which can be set on any express app
• Strategy-based authentication and authorization for users
• Ability to implement single-sign-on using OAuth or OpenID. 
• It can support persistent sessions.
• Allows you to implement custom strategies

Code Example for authenticating incoming requests

app.post(‘/login’, 

  passport.authenticate(‘local’, { failureRedirect: ‘/login’ }),

  function(req, res) {

    res.redirect(‘/’);

  });

Passport is a highly stable and loved NodeJS package for user authentication and authorization, and it is useful in all types of Express apps. If you want to leverage single-sign-on and persistent sessions for your apps without diving deeper into the implementations, this is a great library. 

Socket.IO

Socket.IO is a highly popular library that is used to develop bi-directional event-driven and real-time applications using NodeJS. The library is maintained regularly, and it has over 6 million downloads every week. Below are some awesome features of Socket.IO

• It can detect disconnections in sockets so that the connected devices can know when a connection has expired or disconnected. 
• It can emit any serializable data structure
• It has a simplified API and extensive browser support
• It offers auto-reconnect features for disconnected clients. 
• It can work with load balancers and proxies. 

Code Example that will run on connection

io.on(‘connection’, socket => {

  socket.emit(‘request’, /* … */); // emit an event to the socket

  io.emit(‘broadcast’, /* … */); // emit an event to all connected sockets

  socket.on(‘reply’, () => { /* … */ }); // listen to the event

});

Socket.io has a lot of use cases, and a majority of them revolve around having multiple users connected to a server who are collaborating in real time. Whether you want a multiplayer game, a chat room, or a collaborative business app, you need socket.io to power your real-time connection and data-sharing needs. 

Jest

Jest is a NodeJS package that is used to test applications written in NodeJS or JavaScript. It helps development teams to test applications faster and reliably by supporting the creation of unit, integration, and snapshot testing as in-built features. 

Key Features

• It requires almost zero configuration for most projects
• It can compare UI components for snapshot testing
• It comes with mocking utilities that can be used to mock some functionalities.
• It can run tests in parallel and save time
• It generates detailed reports for code coverage

Code Example

jest –coverage

This command will run tests and provide code coverage reports for your codebase with insights on how to increase the coverage. Moreover, the snapshot test reports can be helpful in verifying UI and functionality together.

Karma

Karma is a test-runner library designed to run javascript tests in browsers through simulations. It is often plugged into testing frameworks like Mocha, Jasmine, or QUnit for different types of application testing. 

Key Features

• It can execute testing in different browsers like Chrome, firefox, safari, etc.
• It can be included in the CI/CD build pipeline for build verifications.
• It can support different plugins for extending functionality
• It comes with a powerful CLI to run and debug tests
• It can rerun tests on file changes

Code Example 

karma start karma.conf.js

This command will start the karma test runner specified in the karma.conf.js file and run the tests as per your test designs.

You should use karma in CI/CD pipelines to ensure all components of your apps work consistently across different browsers and that there aren’t any cross-browser compatibility issues in your builds. 

Bluebird

If you are writing async applications, you should use Bluebird, which is a promise library for JavaScript and NodeJS apps. It offers many advanced features for handling operations, improves performance, and even provides a simpler yet rich API to work with promises in JS. 

Key Features

• It is faster compared to native promises
• It has advanced error handling and can provide better stack traces
• It can cancel promises and offer more control
• It has built-in management for handling timeouts and memory limits
• It has promise utilities which make work easier

Code Example

const Promise = require(‘bluebird’);

Promise.resolve(‘Hello, world!’).then(console.log);

This code shows the usage of the Bluebird NodeJS package and resolves a promise that will print Hello, world on the console.

Bluebird can be highly useful when building large-scale apps that require sync tasks and flows. It can help your apps to process and handle multiple APIs and even manage large datasets.

Redis

Redis is an in-memory caching solution that provides faster read access for cached requests and improves app performance. NPM Redis is one of the best node js npm packages that can be used to interact with Redis caches and databases from a NodeJS app. 

Key Features

• Redis stores data in memory and provides faster read/write access.
• Supports a plethora of data types to be stored in memory
• Helps build pub/sub messaging systems
• Provides snapshot or append-only file operations for data durability
• It can scale through clusters

Code Example

const redis = require(‘redis’);

const client = redis.createClient();

client.set(‘key’, ‘value’, redis.print);

client.get(‘key’, (err, reply) => {

  console.log(reply); // Output: value

});

The above code shows usage of the Redis npm library, where it sets and gets a key from the actual Redis cluster in an easy way. 

Redis is commonly used to cache database results of frequently used queries. By doing so, it can speed up your application and reduce response times, as there is no need to perform the same queries again. 

Yarn

Yarn is a robust package manager for JavaScript frameworks and languages. It was created by facebook to address common issues with the popular NPM package management tool. This offers better dependency management and deterministic installations.

Key Features

• Yarn offers faster installations by caching packages
• It ensures consistent installs across environments
• It can install offline packages from their cached versions
• It can install packages in parallel
• It verifies packages through checksums

Code Example

yarn add express

This yarn command is used to add an express library. Once you run this command, yarn will cache the installation files, and subsequent installations will be faster, too. 

If you have a large project with numerous dependencies across environments, yarn is a good way to go. It will help you install dependencies faster and avoid potential conflicts in library versions across environments. 

Winston

Every application needs logging, and Winston does it best for NodeJS apps. It is a powerful logging library that can be used for handling logs in databases, files, or consoles. Moreover, it provides ample customization features so you can create loggers that meet your app’s needs.

Key Features

• It supports sending logs to files, databases, or even consoles.
• It allows the defining of custom log levels and message formats
• It supports async logging
• It supports JSON format logging
• It does log file rotation to avoid large log files

Code Example

const winston = require(‘winston’);

const logger = winston.createLogger({

  transports: [

    new winston.transports.Console(),

    new winston.transports.File({ filename: ‘combined.log’ })

  ]

});

logger.info(‘This is an informational message’);

Winston is a NodeJS package that you can rely on for your production logging requirements. It is lightweight and has the right features that are crucial for production logging. 

Dotenv

Many times, you will need to store configuration and other such items to environment files, and you need a node js package to load the file on runtime to get saved data. Dotenv is a lightweight package that helps in loading environment variable from a .env file at runtime. 

Key Features

• It can easily load environment variables from any .env file
• It helps in removing config from your code
• It can help in creating environment-specific config files
• It integrates with NodeJS apps easily
• It can work across different environments pretty easily

Code Example

require(‘dotenv’).config();

console.log(process.env.DB_HOST); // Access the DB_HOST variable from the .env file

Dotenv is one of the best npm modules when it comes to loading and saving environment variables for runtime usage. It can open any .env file from a project and provide access to stored data. 

Mongoose

Every app requires a database to save some sort of information, and Mongoose is a good option when you want object data modeling capabilities for your apps. It simplifies interactions with MongoDB by creating an abstraction layer over the DB for modifying, querying, or other DB operations. 

Key Features

• It allows schema definition for MongoDB tables
• It has built-in data validation 
• It supports middlewares
• It has a simple API for all operations
• It has extensive documentation and relational-like queries

Code Example

const mongoose = require(‘mongoose’);

mongoose.connect(‘mongodb://localhost/mydb’);

const userSchema = new mongoose.Schema({ name: String });

const User = mongoose.model(‘User’, userSchema);

const newUser = new User({ name: ‘John’ });

newUser.save().then(() => console.log(‘User saved!’));

If you need NoSQL databases and want to work with them confidently, Mongoose is the top nodejs package that will help you. It can help create new schemas and add or retrieve information from DB. 

Chintan Gor

CTO, eSparkBiz

Enthusiastic for web app development, Chintan Gor has zeal in experimenting with his knowledge of Node, Angular & React in various aspects of development. He keeps on updating his technical know-how thus pinning his name among the topmost CTO's in India. His contribution is penned down by him through various technical blogs on trending tech. He is associated with eSparkBiz from the past 14+ years where one can get premium services.