Developer Enablement Briefing — April 30, 2025

Executive briefing: Node.js 18 exits maintenance on April 30, 2025. After this deadline the OpenJS security team will stop issuing CVE patches, builds, and support for the release line. Organizations running serverless functions, container images, or developer tooling pinned to Node 18 must advance to Node 20 or later to retain a supported JavaScript runtime, satisfy enterprise vulnerability policies, and continue receiving supply-chain security updates.

Key vendor signals

Security releases cease. No further OpenSSL, V8, or npm advisories will be backported to 18.x, and the Node.js Release Working Group removes CI coverage for the branch.
Cloud platforms deprecate runtimes. Major providers including AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions follow the community schedule, triggering deprecation notices and upgrade windows aligned to the April 2025 date.
Toolchain drift. Package managers, build tools, and testing frameworks begin dropping Node 18 CI targets, shrinking community support and risking incompatibilities.

Upgrade priorities

Adopt Node.js 20 or 22. Standardize on Long-Term Support releases with extended maintenance to 2026–2027, validating native module compatibility.
Refresh CI/CD baselines. Update GitHub Actions, container base images, and infrastructure-as-code modules to reference supported Node versions.
Revalidate security baselines. Re-run SCA, SAST, and supply-chain policies against updated runtimes to account for new compiler flags and OpenSSL libraries.

Enablement moves

Publish platform migration guides covering breaking changes between Node 18 and Node 20/22, including global fetch defaults and test runner updates.
Coordinate with product teams to align deployment freezes and release train schedules so runtime upgrades land before the end-of-life cutover.

Sources

Zeph Tech accelerates runtime migrations by mapping dependency compatibility, upgrading CI fleets, and instrumenting health checks across Node.js platforms.