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About this tool
Compare npm, pnpm and Yarn on install strategy, disk usage, lockfiles, strictness and workspaces — with a weighted recommendation for your project.
This comparison puts npm, pnpm and Yarn (Berry) side by side on the things that actually differ: install strategy (flat copies vs a hard-linked content-addressable store vs Plug'n'Play zips), lockfile formats, disk usage, phantom-dependency strictness and workspace tooling. Tick the criteria that matter to your project — disk, speed, compatibility, monorepo scale, strictness or zero setup — and get a ranked recommendation with the mechanism behind each score, plus a command cheat sheet for switching.
Open npm pnpm yarn Comparison on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Paste your code or data sample into the workspace.
Pick the format, conversion, or analysis you need.
Copy the polished result straight back into your project.
Every difference is tied to how the manager actually stores and links packages, per its own docs.
Pick your criteria and get a ranked score out of 5 per criterion, with the reason for each point.
Equivalent commands for install, add, remove, dlx, update and frozen-lockfile CI installs.
pnpm keeps every package file once in a global content-addressable store and hard-links it into each project's node_modules, so ten projects using the same lodash version share one physical copy. npm copies the full package into every project; its global cache only holds compressed tarballs.
A phantom dependency is a package your code imports but never declared — it works only because npm's flat hoisting happened to place it at the top of node_modules. pnpm prevents this by default (only declared deps are resolvable through its symlink structure), and Yarn Plug'n'Play rejects it at resolution time.
No — each manager reads only its own format (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, yarn.lock), and keeping two lockfiles guarantees they drift apart. Pick one manager per repository, commit its lockfile, and add a packageManager field so Corepack pins the exact version for everyone.
Yarn 1 is in maintenance mode — it receives no new features and the Yarn team directs users to modern Yarn (Berry) via Corepack. Existing projects keep working, but new projects should choose npm, pnpm or current Yarn rather than starting on Classic.