Every claim here has a test. Run on Node 22.22.2, 24.22.1 and 26.12.1. Install sizes measured October 24, 2026.

I installed 13 popular packages into an empty project. npm reported 389 packages and 59.7 MB in node_modules .

Then I wrote replacements using only what ships with Node, and tested each one. The result is a project with zero dependencies and a 50-test suite.

Not every swap is worth making. Some of these packages are tiny, and deleting them saves almost nothing on disk. I'll say which ones, and I'll point out the sharp edges in the built-ins too.

Baseline is Node 24, the current Active LTS. Node 26 is scheduled to enter LTS this month. When something needs a version newer than 22, the section says so.

The numbers

Each package was installed alone in a clean directory.…