Node.js is a powerful, open-source, cross-platform runtime environment that enables developers to execute JavaScript code outside of a browser, predominantly on the server-side. Built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine, Node.js is designed to create scalable and efficient applications through its event-driven, non-blocking I/O model, which makes it particularly suitable for data-intensive real-time applications like chat apps, live streaming, and collaborative tools. It features a rich ecosystem of libraries, available through the npm (Node Package Manager), allowing developers to easily manage dependencies and extend capabilities. With its capacity to handle numerous simultaneous connections with high throughput, Node.js has become a popular choice among developers for modern web and mobile back-end development, offering rapid development cycles and enhanced performance. Its single-threaded execution model can be extended with worker threads for CPU-heavy tasks, and it seamlessly integrates with various JavaScript frameworks, enabling full-stack development with a consistent language between front-end and back-end systems.

View the most prominent open source Node.js projects in the list below. Click on a specific project to view its alternative or complementary packages.