Node 20 vs 22 vs 24: Which LTS Should You Actually Run in Production?

Node 20 vs 22 vs 24: Which Node.js LTS Should You Run in Production? I’ve watched “just bump Node” turn into a 3 a.m. rollback because TLS started throwing errors nobody handled. Pick your Node LTS like an ops decision. You want fewer CVEs, fewer surprises in TLS and HTTP, and fewer native addon faceplants in your Docker build logs. The default choice (and the two reasons to ignore it) Run Node 22 LTS for new production services when you control the runtime (Kubernetes, VMs, container images you build yourself). It gives you a newer baseline, ongoing security backports, and a reasonable ecosystem match. But I would still choose Node 20 in two cases: your platform pins you, or your native addons act like glass. Stay on Node 20 when the platform pins you: AWS Lambda, old PaaS stacks, or internal golden images sometimes lag. If you cannot ship a container image or custom runtime, you do not really “choose” Node. Stay on Node 20 when native addons scare you: If your CI cannot rebuild linux