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:
GitHub updated at: 2025-09-05T14:46:04.575Z
Version rolloutLast week
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:
GitHub updated at: 2025-09-05T14:46:04.666Z
vuejs/core
- 52K
- 1.3B
- 3.5.21
- MIT
🖖 Vue.js is a progressive, incrementally-adoptable JavaScript framework for building UI on the web.
Version rolloutLast week
GitHub updated at: 2025-09-05T14:46:04.598Z
Version rolloutLast week
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.drpossum |
This proves React is dead, you should use Svelte now.
Someone who didn’t notice Svelte stats were also down:
GitHub updated at: 2025-09-05T14:46:04.686Z
Version rolloutLast week
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.
Freelance developer & founder