The latest articles on DEV Community by Sigmon (@sigmondev). https://dev.to/sigmondev https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3989219%2F70909c06-da99-4be1-9eaa-02451120cc21.png https://dev.to/sigmondev en Sigmon Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:46:24 +0000 https://dev.to/sigmondev/the-most-installed-js-frameworks-arent-the-most-starred-i-checked-14-2pdl https://dev.to/sigmondev/the-most-installed-js-frameworks-arent-the-most-starred-i-checked-14-2pdl <p>GitHub stars are the default way we judge a JS project's popularity. But stars measure who's <em>watching</em> a project, not who's <em>shipping</em> with it. So I pulled GitHub stars and npm weekly downloads for 14 JS frameworks to see how far apart "mindshare" and "actual usage" really are.</p> <p>The gap was bigger than I expected.</p> <h2> The most-installed tools aren't the most-starred </h2> <p>Three anchors: Hono has 31k stars and 44.8M installs/week. TanStack Query, 49.8k stars and 58.5M installs/week. Next.js, 140k stars and 37.9M installs/week. So the two tools with a <em>fraction</em> of Next's stars both out-install it every single week.</p> <p>Ranked by downloads-per-star — how much a tool gets <em>used</em> vs <em>admired</em>:</p> <div class="table-wrapper-paragraph"><table> <thead> <tr> <th>Framework</th> <th>downloads-per-star</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Hono</td> <td><strong>1,445x</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td>TanStack Query</td> <td><strong>1,175x</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td>Next.js</td> <td>271x</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Vue</td> <td>255x</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Svelte</td> <td>55x</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Remix</td> <td>24x</td> </tr> </tbody> </table></div> <h2> downloads-per-star ranges ~60x across the set </h2> <p>That's the real headline. How much a tool gets <em>used</em> vs how much it gets <em>admired</em> spans from ~24x (Remix) to ~1,445x (Hono) — a 60x spread. Stars and actual usage are barely correlated at the top.</p> <h2> Why the ratio, not absolute installs? </h2> <p>npm download counts are noisy. CI pipelines re-install on every run, mirrors double-count, and now coding agents pull packages constantly. Absolute installs overstate real usage, and the inflation isn't even across tools.</p> <p>The downloads-per-star <em>ratio</em> held up better as a signal: small drop-in libraries get added to <code>package.json</code> and shipped without anyone bothering to star them, while big-name frameworks pile up stars from people who never deploy with them.</p> <p>You star what you admire. You install what you actually ship with.</p> <h2> The full 14 </h2> <p>I wrote up all 14 frameworks with the method and raw numbers here: <a href="https://sigmon.dev/blog/state-of-framework-tools-2026-06" rel="noopener noreferrer">state of framework tools 2026</a>.</p> javascript webdev node opensource