npm's Hidden API — Package Downloads, Dependencies, and Ecosystem Data for Free

npm has 2.5 million packages. The npm registry has a free API that tells you everything about any package — no authentication, no rate limits. The API Search packages: https://registry.npmjs.org/-/v1/search?text=web+scraping&size=25 Get package details: https://registry.npmjs.org/cheerio Get download counts: https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-week/cheerio What This Reveals Technology adoption curves. Weekly downloads over time = is a framework growing or dying? Competitive landscape. Compare download counts between competing packages: Cheerio vs Puppeteer vs Playwright. Dependency analysis. What packages does your technology depend on? What depends on it? Market sizing. Total packages in a category = ecosystem maturity. Use Cases Developer tool companies: Track how your npm package performs vs competitors. Investors: npm downloads are a leading indicator of developer tool adoption. Content creators: Write about packages with high downloads but low documentation coverage. The To