NPM download stats are down

I noticed the problem on 2023-09-14, while I was working on my NPM package embed.

It looks like this, showing NPM download stats for the last 30 days:

$ pnpm add react
 $ yarn add react
 $ npm install react

After seeing the latest download stats zero-out, I thought it was a bug in my code, but a quick call to the NPM registry API confirmed there’s an issue across the whole registry:

$ curl -s https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/range/2023-09-12:2023-09-20/ | jq .
 
{
    "start": "2023-09-12",
    "end": "2023-09-20",
    "downloads": [
        {
            "downloads": 10511123926,
            "day": "2023-09-12"
        },
        {
            "downloads": 0,
            "day": "2023-09-13"
        },
        {
            "downloads": 0,
            "day": "2023-09-14"
        },
        {
            "downloads": 8912767625,
            "day": "2023-09-15"
        },
        {
            "downloads": 2444583811,
            "day": "2023-09-16"
        },
        {
            "downloads": 2260617731,
            "day": "2023-09-17"
        },
        {
            "downloads": 0,
            "day": "2023-09-18"
        },
        {
            "downloads": 0,
            "day": "2023-09-19"
        },
        {
            "downloads": 0,
            "day": "2023-09-20"
        }
    ]
}

And indeed, other popular packages show the same decline:

$ pnpm add vue
 $ yarn add vue
 $ npm install vue

$ pnpm add @angular/core
 $ yarn add @angular/core
 $ npm install @angular/core

After a couple of days, it started to show on NPM’s own website:

Reddit and Hacker News users were quick to react, with some hilarious comments:

Bun 1.0 is out, so everyone is switching to that.

You should use PNPM anyway.

Some folks were prompt to draw ominous conclusions:

Well, that confirms it, javascript and front end development is dead. I'll start looking for a new job.

This proves React is dead, you should use Svelte now.

$ pnpm add svelte
 $ yarn add svelte
 $ npm install svelte

Official response from NPM

I contacted NPM support on 2023-09-15, but didn’t get much of a useful response:

Yes, we also see the zero download count on different packages.

This issue remains under investigation.

We will let you know once we have an update.

Resolution

As of 2023-09-24, the problem seems to have been resolved. Stats are returning to normal, and previous zero values have been restored for all tested packages.