forever VS PM2

Compare forever vs PM2 and see what are their differences.

forever

A simple CLI tool for ensuring that a given script runs continuously (i.e. forever) (by foreversd)
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forever PM2
7 56
13,849 40,453
0.1% -
0.0 6.8
10 months ago 9 days ago
JavaScript JavaScript
MIT License GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

forever

Posts with mentions or reviews of forever. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-07-04.
  • Can I make NodeJS app loop forever?
    2 projects | /r/node | 4 Jul 2023
    Have you checked out https://github.com/foreversd/forever
  • Experience on PM2 Tricks to manage your NodeJs processes
    3 projects | dev.to | 5 Aug 2022
    Forever A simple CLI tool for ensuring that a given script runs continuously (i.e. forever)
  • No Answers on Google
    2 projects | /r/nodered | 9 Aug 2021
    Also, if you want node red to run on startup, you can use PM2 or forever to make that happen.
  • Open Source Accountability
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 May 2021
    Any advice when open source maintainers neglect popular projects.

    The point here is that we depend on open source and as a result need maintenance. I can see how some of you would say switch to pm2 or something newer, but it would be a lot simpler for us just to get our SCA scan passing.

    https://github.com/foreversd/forever/issues/1106

    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 May 2021
    There is no accountability. From the license (MIT) https://github.com/foreversd/forever/blob/master/LICENSE#L13...

    > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, [...]

    You can fork it, if you wish. You can maintain a public fork and even accept patches from the community, or not accept patches, or only maintain a private fork and not share it with anyone.

    Also, it looks like it's in a semi-zombie state. They even encourage to use other programs:

    > A simple CLI tool for ensuring that a given script runs continuously (i.e. forever). Note that this project currently fully depends on the community for implementing fixes and new features. For new installations we encourage you to use pm2 or nodemon

  • Set wallpaper without command prompt console popping up?
    5 projects | /r/node | 1 Apr 2021
    This is great but, I'd rather not have a console left open 24/7, so I decided to use the forever package to run my script in the background:

PM2

Posts with mentions or reviews of PM2. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-07.
  • AI for Web Devs: Deploying Your AI App to Production
    6 projects | dev.to | 7 Feb 2024
    There are plenty of ways to accomplish this: Docker, Kubernetes, Pulumis, etc., but I don’t like to add too much complexity. So for a basic app, I like to use PM2, a Node.js process manager with great features, including the ability to run our app in the background.
  • How to get the count of your followers on dev.to
    3 projects | dev.to | 16 Nov 2023
    This project will consist of a single "index.js" file that you can deploy anywhere. I recommend using an Nginx reverse proxy and pm2 to keep the service running.
  • A Guide To Self-Hosting Web Apps On Ubuntu Servers
    4 projects | dev.to | 10 Nov 2023
    Your app should be running now. To be able to run the app in the background, I will use pm2. Stop your application using "Ctrl + C" and install pm2
  • How to run Ec2-instance constantly?
    2 projects | /r/aws | 12 Jul 2023
  • 7 Tips to Build Scalable Node.js Applications
    5 projects | dev.to | 16 May 2023
    Additionally, it provides many more features to manage and visualize the processes. More details on PM2 can be found in their official documentation.
    5 projects | dev.to | 16 May 2023
    You can create child processes that run concurrently with the application sharing the same port, which helps scale the application within the same server. Clusters can be implemented using the built-in cluster module of Node.js or a library like PM2, widely used in production applications.
  • Serving react statically with express
    6 projects | /r/node | 29 Apr 2023
    Lastly if you want to run your dev build tool and backend as a single command you could try something like pm2 (https://www.npmjs.com/package/pm2) or concurrently (https://www.npmjs.com/package/concurrently). This isn't necessary but might be a nice-to-have. NPM workspaces could help you organize this with a common package.json file too. (https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/using-npm/workspaces)
  • Building a Pseudo Multi-Tenant App in Strapi: Step-by-Step
    3 projects | dev.to | 22 Feb 2023
    For more documentation on pm2, you can read from here
  • Host SvelteKit apps with SSR-support via ploi.io (on Hetzner Cloud)
    4 projects | dev.to | 16 Dec 2022
    "PM2 is a production process manager for Node.js applications with a built-in load balancer. It allows you to keep applications alive forever, to reload them without downtime and to facilitate common system admin tasks." (pm2)
    4 projects | dev.to | 16 Dec 2022
    See pm2 quickstart docs for more information.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing forever and PM2 you can also consider the following projects:

Nodemon.io - Monitor for any changes in your node.js application and automatically restart the server - perfect for development

supervisor

Phusion Passenger - A fast and robust web server and application server for Ruby, Python and Node.js

supervisor - Supervisor process control system for Unix (supervisord)

naught - Zero downtime deployment for your Node.js server using builtin cluster API

node-windows - Windows support for Node.JS scripts (daemons, eventlog, UAC, etc).

God - Ruby process monitor

node-clinic - Clinic.js diagnoses your Node.js performance issues

TypeORM - ORM for TypeScript and JavaScript. Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, SQLite, MS SQL Server, Oracle, SAP Hana, WebSQL databases. Works in NodeJS, Browser, Ionic, Cordova and Electron platforms.

dotenv-flow - Loads environment variables from .env.[development|test|production][.local] files for Node.js® projects.