npm outdated: Usage, Options & Output

See which dependencies are behind - and by how much.

npm outdated reports installed packages with newer versions available, distinguishing the highest in-range version (Wanted) from the absolute latest.

What it does

Prints a table of Current / Wanted / Latest for each dependency that has an update. Wanted is the newest version your package.json range allows; Latest is the newest published. It exits with code 1 when anything is outdated, which matters in CI.

Common usage

npm outdated                # table of outdated deps
npm outdated --json         # machine-readable output
npm outdated --long         # include dependency type
npm outdated -g             # outdated global packages

Common CI gotcha: nonzero exit fails the job

A CI step running npm outdated unexpectedly fails the job, because npm outdated exits 1 whenever updates exist - it is not an error, just a signal. If you only want a report, swallow the exit code so it does not break the pipeline.

npm outdated || true        # report without failing the job

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