Side-by-side NPM package comparison
Smallest Bundle
Jsonwebtoken
15.6 KB gzipped
Most Popular
Jose
61.0M weekly downloads
Best Maintained
Jose
100/100 maintenance score
Highest Quality
Jose
50/100 quality score
Overall Pick
Jose
Best all-around based on popularity, size, maintenance & quality
Version 6.2.2
JWA, JWS, JWE, JWT, JWK, JWKS for Node.js, Browser, Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, and other Web-interoperable runtimes
Version 9.0.3
JSON Web Token implementation (symmetric and asymmetric)
Choosing between Jose and Jsonwebtoken? Here's a data-driven comparison based on real npm data — downloads, bundle size, health scores, and more — to help you decide which package fits your project best.
Jose leads with 61.0M weekly downloads — roughly 1.7x more. Jsonwebtoken has 37.0M weekly downloads. Higher download counts generally indicate broader community adoption and a larger ecosystem of tutorials, plugins, and support.
Jsonwebtoken has the smallest gzipped bundle at 15.6 KB. Jose comes in at 17.6 KB. A smaller bundle size means faster page loads, which improves user experience and Core Web Vitals scores.
Jose has an overall health score of 85/100 (very good), with strong maintenance, security, popularity scores. Jsonwebtoken has an overall health score of 85/100 (very good), with strong maintenance, security, popularity scores. Health scores are calculated from maintenance activity, code quality, security posture, popularity, and stability metrics.
Choose Jose if you value massive community and ecosystem, actively maintained, strong security track record. Choose Jsonwebtoken if you value massive community and ecosystem, actively maintained, strong security track record.
Both Jose and Jsonwebtoken are solid choices for JavaScript development. Jose has the edge in overall health score (85/100), while each package brings unique strengths to the table. Evaluate them based on your project's priorities — whether that's community size, bundle efficiency, or maintenance activity — and choose the one that aligns best with your requirements.
jose and jsonwebtoken are the two most popular JWT libraries in the Node.js ecosystem, but they represent different generations of JavaScript development. jsonwebtoken, created in 2013, is the established standard — it's the library most Node.js tutorials reference and has an enormous install base. jose, maintained by the same author who works on OAuth/OIDC standards (Filip Skokan), is a modern, standards-compliant alternative built for today's JavaScript landscape.
The biggest practical difference is runtime compatibility. jose is a zero-dependency, ESM-first library that works everywhere: Node.js, Deno, Bun, Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge Functions, and browsers. It uses the Web Crypto API (available in all modern runtimes) rather than Node.js-specific crypto modules. jsonwebtoken depends on Node.js built-in modules (crypto, buffer, stream) and doesn't work in edge runtimes or browsers without polyfills. If you're deploying to edge functions or serverless platforms, jose is often the only option that works out of the box.
jose also implements the full JOSE (JSON Object Signing and Encryption) specification suite — JWS, JWE, JWK, JWKS, and JWT — while jsonwebtoken only handles JWT signing and verification. If you need encrypted tokens (JWE), key management (JWK/JWKS), or standards-compliant token handling, jose covers all of it in a single library. For teams building OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect flows, jose's comprehensive JOSE support eliminates the need for multiple dependencies. jsonwebtoken remains the simpler choice for straightforward JWT sign/verify operations — its callback-based API is familiar to anyone who's written Node.js code.
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