Is istanbul still maintained?
No — istanbul stopped being maintained around August 2016. The same project continues under the name nyc.
- Status
- No longer maintained
- Last maintained
- August 2016
- Use instead
nyc— on npm- Succession
- Renamed package
- Drop-in
- no — expect code changes
- Confidence
- high
What should I use instead of istanbul?
The same project continues under the name nyc. nyc is not a drop-in replacement, so expect to change call sites.
How to migrate from istanbul to nyc
Replace istanbul cover _mocha style commands with nyc mocha. Configuration moves from CLI flags to .nycrc or an "nyc" key in package.json.
Why istanbul is on this list
The istanbul CLI stopped at 0.4.5 in August 2016 and is deprecated on npm with a notice recommending nyc. Istanbul did not disappear — it was rewritten as the istanbuljs monorepo, with nyc as the command line front end and istanbul-lib-* as the internals. c8 is the newer option for projects that prefer V8's built-in coverage.
The succession is settled: primary sources agree and the ecosystem has already moved.
istanbul alternatives
Beyond the primary recommendation, these are credible for istanbul's use case:
c8— view on npm@vitest/coverage-v8— view on npm
Check your own project for istanbul
npx dead-deps --all --min-state unmaintainedRun that in the directory holding your lockfile. If istanbul is anywhere in your tree — a direct dependency or buried under something else — it appears in the report with this verdict, this successor and the same evidence links, alongside anything else that has stopped moving. Nothing is uploaded; the scan reads your lockfile locally and queries public registry metadata.
Exit code 1 means something was flagged, which makes npx dead-deps --min-state deprecated usable as a CI gate. See how verdicts are produced.
Evidence
Every claim on this page traces to a primary source. Check them:
- npm deprecation notice for istanbul ("no longer maintained, try this instead: npm i nyc")npmjs.com
- istanbul.js.org integrations page: nyc is "the successor to the istanbul command line tool"istanbul.js.org
Packages related to istanbul
- @hapi/joiRenamed package: joi · unmaintained since March 2020
- @material-ui/coreRenamed package: @mui/material · unmaintained since September 2021
- apollo-serverRenamed package: @apollo/server · unmaintained since November 2023
- apollo-server-expressRenamed package: @apollo/server · unmaintained since November 2023
- babel-eslintRenamed package: @babel/eslint-parser · unmaintained since February 2020
See the full index of covered packages, or read the methodology for how a verdict is reached and why a quiet package is not a dead one.