What is the recommended way to handle unhandled promise rejections in Node.js applications?

[jeet-dev111]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to better understand best practices for handling unhandled promise rejections in Node.js applications.

Specifically:

→ What is the recommended way to globally handle unhandled rejections?
→ Should we always use process.on('unhandledRejection', ...), or is there a better production-safe pattern?
→ How does Node.js behave in recent versions regarding unhandled promise rejections?
→ Are there performance or stability concerns when relying on global handlers?

I’d appreciate guidance on current best practices for production environments.

Thanks!

[Om-singh-ui]

The best practice is to handle promise rejections at the source using try/catch (with async/await) or .catch() on promises. This prevents unhandled rejections in the first place.

You can use:

process.on('unhandledRejection', (reason) => { console.error('Unhandled Rejection:', reason); process.exit(1); // recommended in production });

But this should only be a safety net not your main error-handling strategy.
In production, it’s generally safer to log the error and exit the process, then let a process manager (PM2, Docker, etc.) restart the app.

hope, you get that!