CommonJS allows you to load modules dynamically. There are technical differences between CommonJS and ES6 modules, e.g. So even if you use ES6 module syntax, you will be using CommonJS under the hood if you run the code in Node. Babel converts import and export declaration to CommonJS ( require/ module.exports) by default anyway. You said yourself that you are using Babel. Keep in mind that there is no JavaScript engine yet that natively supports ES6 modules. Unlike require, this returns a promise.Īre there any performance benefits to using one over the other? In the end you have to run benchmarks to get a definite answer anyway.ĮS modules can be loaded dynamically via the import() function. However, since module files are only evaluated once, the performance aspect can probably be ignored. Performance-wise there is always the chance that newer features are not as well optimized as existing features. The Node documentation has a ton more information, also about interop between CommonJS and ES modules. mjs or the nearest package.json file must contain 'type': 'module'.

Files including node modules must either end in.

Since Node v12 (April 2019), support for ES modules is enabled by default, and since Node v15 (October 2020) it's stable (see here).

Nodejs es6