node-fetch/node-fetch

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

8856 stars · 1058 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

A light-weight module that brings the WHATWG Fetch API to Node.js, providing a spec-compliant fetch() with promise-based requests and stream support. It is the widely-used polyfill for fetch in Node.js versions before native fetch was available.

Use cases

• make http requests in node.js with fetch api
• polyfill fetch for older node versions
• download from an api in node
• post form data or to a web service
• stream response bodies in node.js
• cancel http requests with abortsignal

When to choose

• you're on Node.js < 18 without native fetch
• you want a spec-compliant, lightweight fetch client
• you need stream-based response handling with the fetch API

When to avoid

• you're on Node.js 18+ where fetch is built in
• you need advanced features like interceptors or automatic retries
• you're writing browser code where fetch already exists

Facets

library · maturity stable

http-client web-development developer-tools apis fetch-api whatwg-fetch promise-based spec-compliant streams nodejs javascript

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