𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁-𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗝𝗦 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲𝗻'𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁-𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗱
GitHub stars measure attention. npm downloads measure usage. Most people think they are the same. My data shows they are not.
I compared GitHub stars against weekly npm downloads for 14 JavaScript frameworks. The gap between popularity and actual use is massive.
Look at these three examples:
• Hono: 31k stars and 44.8M weekly installs. • TanStack Query: 49.8k stars and 58.5M weekly installs. • Next.js: 140k stars and 37.9M weekly installs.
Hono and TanStack Query have fewer stars than Next.js. They still get more weekly installs.
The downloads-per-star ratio shows how much a tool is used versus how much people admire it:
• Hono: 1,445x • TanStack Query: 1,175x • Next.js: 271x • Vue: 255x • Svelte: 55x • Remix: 24x
The spread is 60x. Stars and usage do not correlate well at the top.
npm numbers are not perfect. CI pipelines and coding agents inflate these counts. However, the ratio remains a strong signal.
Small libraries get added to projects without a star. Big frameworks get stars from people who never use them in production.
You star what you admire. You install what you ship.
Source: https://dev.to/sigmondev/the-most-installed-js-frameworks-arent-the-most-starred-i-checked-14-2pdl