npm vs pnpm: The Definitive Guide for 2025

Heading into late 2025, the debate between npm and pnpm has evolved. While pnpm remains the champion of performance and disk efficiency, npm has introduced several optimizations to reduce the performance gap. However, for modern, large-scale TypeScript projects, the choice is clearer than ever.

As of September 2025, pnpm continues to be the preferred choice for monorepos and high-performance CI/CD pipelines.

1. Speed and Multi-threaded Resolution

In 2025, pnpm's multi-threaded dependency resolution is more mature. While npm 10+ has made strides in caching, pnpm's architecture still results in faster "cold" installs.

2025 Performance Benchmarks

pnpm: ~12s for a medium React project
npm: ~24s for the same project
Conclusion: pnpm remains approximately 2x faster in fresh environments.

2. Global Content-Addressable Storage

pnpm's greatest advantage remains its storage strategy. In 2025, with increasing project sizes and dependency counts, saving disk space is a priority for many developers working on multiple microservices.

65%

Average Disk Space Saved

By using hard links to a single global store, you avoid storing the same version of lodash or typescript dozens of times across your machine.

3. Dealing with "Phantom Dependencies"

The risk of phantom dependencies—accessing packages not explicitly declared in your package.json—remains a major concern in 2025. npm's flat node_modules still allows this behavior, whereas pnpm's strict symlinked structure prevents it.

Using npm in large teams often leads to "it works on my machine" bugs when one developer relies on a sub-dependency that another developer's environment handles differently.

4. The 2025 State of Monorepos

Monorepos have become the industry standard for enterprise applications. pnpm's built-in workspace support is widely considered superior to npm workspaces due to its handling of shared dependencies and recursive execution.

bash

# Running a command across all 2025 packages
pnpm -r exec jest

Final Verdict for late 2025

Recommendation: For any new professional project in 2025, choose pnpm. Its strictness ensures reliable builds, and its performance saves hours of cumulative CI/CD time.

Last Updated: September 25, 2025