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 Tool
My MCP Market Research Server includes npm as one of 9 data sources. npm Package Scraper provides direct access.
All 77 tools: Apify Store
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