NPM

• The NPM stands for Node Package Manager. NPM is a Package Installation Tool, Used to install, delete, and update Javascript packages on your machine.
• NPM installs packages globally, which means that your machine may be polluted by packages that are not required anymore in the long run.
• To use create-react-app using NPM, we would first have to install it globally, and then run it, which makes using NPM in such cases redundant.

NPX

• NPX stands for Node Package eXecute.NPXis a tool for executing packages. NPX is a npm package runner whose job it is to execute a package from the registry without ever installing it.
• NPX does not install packages, so package pollution on the machine is not a concern.
• The most common application of NPX is the create-react-app command. Since we only need to use it once, i.e., while initializing the project, we do not install it.

Which is better NPM vs NPX?

If the package in issue is only to be used once or twice, rather than every time the project runs, it is preferable to utilize NPX, which will execute the package without installing it. NPM is used to install packages, which we should do if our project requires dependencies or packages.

Final Conclusion

NPM is a package manager used to install, update or remove packages and dependencies your project requires. NPX is an NPM package used to execute any package on the NPM registry directly without installing it.