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renovatebot/renovate

📈 Trending★ 21,550TypeScriptAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5ActiveLicenseSetup · moderate

TLDR

Automated tool that scans your code dependencies and opens pull requests to keep them up to date with security patches and bug fixes.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Renovate))
    What it does
      Scans dependencies
      Opens update PRs
      Checks new versions
      Proposes changes
    How to use it
      Cloud-hosted service
      Self-hosted server
      Build pipeline step
    Supported platforms
      GitHub, GitLab
      Bitbucket, Azure DevOps
      Gitea and others
    Package managers
      npm, Java, Python
      .NET, Ruby, Go, Docker
    Key features
      90+ package managers
      Community confidence scores
      Full user control
      Security updates

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Automatically receive pull requests when security patches are available for your project's dependencies.

USE CASE 2

Keep npm, Python, Java, and Docker dependencies current without manual tracking across multiple projects.

USE CASE 3

Run dependency updates as part of your CI/CD pipeline to catch breaking changes before they reach production.

USE CASE 4

Self-host Renovate on your own infrastructure to manage updates for private repositories without cloud services.

Tech stack

TypeScriptNode.jsnpmDocker

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires Docker and GitHub API credentials to open pull requests.

Use freely for any purpose, but any modifications or derivative works must also be open source under the same AGPL-3.0 license.

In plain English

Renovate is an automated tool that keeps the third-party software dependencies in your code project up to date. Dependencies are the external libraries and packages your code relies on, every project has many of them, and they release new versions regularly with bug fixes and security patches. Manually tracking and updating them is tedious and easy to neglect. Renovate does this work for you automatically. When you connect Renovate to your code repository, it scans your project files to find all the dependencies you have listed, checks whether newer versions exist, and then opens pull requests (proposed changes) in your repository for each update it finds. Those pull requests include information like how old the new version is, how widely adopted it is, and how confident the community is that the update is safe, so you can make an informed decision about whether to merge it. You retain full control; Renovate proposes the changes, but you approve them. The tool supports over 90 different package managers and works with repositories hosted on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps, Gitea, and several other platforms. It covers updates for dependencies across many languages including npm (JavaScript/TypeScript), Java, Python.NET, Ruby, Go, and Docker. You can run Renovate in several ways: as a free cloud-hosted service on GitHub or Bitbucket (no setup required), as a self-hosted server on your own infrastructure, or as a step in your existing automated build pipeline. The project is maintained by Mend.io, written in TypeScript, and licensed under AGPL-3.0.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I set up Renovate on my GitHub repository to automatically update npm dependencies?
Prompt 2
Show me how to configure Renovate to only update patch versions and skip major version bumps.
Prompt 3
How can I self-host Renovate on my own server instead of using the cloud service?
Prompt 4
What information does Renovate include in its pull requests to help me decide whether to merge an update?
Prompt 5
How do I configure Renovate to handle Docker image updates in my docker-compose.yml file?
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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.