inupcomparison · verified 2026-07-09
inup vs npm-check
npm-check pioneered the friendly interactive updater — and it still works, which is why hundreds of thousands of people still download it monthly. But its last release was July 2022: no workspaces, no yarn/pnpm/bun, and no development since.
| Feature | inup | npm-check |
|---|---|---|
| One tool for npm, yarn, pnpm & bun | ||
| Interactive upgrade UI | ||
| Monorepos & workspaces | ||
| Vulnerability audit in the picker | ||
| Changelogs in the terminal | ||
| Search & dep-type toggles in the UI | ||
| CI gate + JSON report | ||
| GitHub Action included | ||
| Actively maintained (2026) | ||
| Finds unused dependencies | ||
| Checks globally installed packages |
What you gain by moving
- A maintained tool. npm-check's dependency stack is four years old; inup ships actively against today's registry behaviour, package managers and Node versions.
- Everything after 2022: workspaces and monorepos, pnpm catalogs, yarn/pnpm/bun support, a security audit in the picker, changelogs in the terminal, and headless CI modes.
What you'd genuinely miss
- Unused-dependency detection. npm-check tells you when a dependency isn't imported anywhere (via depcheck). inup doesn't do this — pair it with knip, which does it far more thoroughly than npm-check ever did.
- Global package checks (
npm-check -g).
Honest verdict: npm-check earned its popularity, but it stopped moving in 2022. For interactive upgrades, inup is the maintained successor; for npm-check's unused-deps feature, knip is the better modern answer.
Try it in any project: npx inup
Frequently asked questions
Is npm-check still maintained?
Its last release was July 2022. It still works for simple npm projects, but it has no workspace/monorepo support, no yarn/pnpm/bun support, and no development since.
What replaces npm-check’s unused-dependency detection?
inup does not detect unused dependencies. Pair it with knip, which finds unused dependencies, exports and files far more thoroughly than npm-check’s depcheck integration ever did.
What do I gain by moving from npm-check to inup?
Workspaces and monorepos, pnpm catalogs, yarn/pnpm/bun support, a security audit in the picker, changelogs in the terminal, and headless CI modes with a versioned JSON report.
Sources: npm registry publish history, npm-check README, inup source. Verified 2026-07-09. Also see inup vs npm-check-updates and inup vs taze.