pnpm 12 has been rewritten in Rust and delivers dramatically faster package installations. Internal testing shows the new version installed a package without cache in 5.19 seconds—36.8% faster than pnpm 11 (8.22s) and 89.1% faster than npm (47.7s).
The upgrade maintains backward compatibility with pnpm 11, so the transition feels seamless rather than disruptive. Commands, options, configurations, and the lockfile format remain unchanged. Documentation supports both versions, making the migration straightforward for teams. Users can update immediately by running pnpm self-update next-12.