PM2 Cluster Mode vs. Node Cluster Performance

Question

I understand that PM2 Cluster Mode allows us to easily scale across CPUs on a single machine. Does it create multiple instances of the node application it is scaling? Essentially, is it the same thing as running multiple node applications on different ports with a reverse proxy like Nginx?

Then, there's Node Cluster which forks a child process. Is this approach more efficient compared to PM2 Cluster Mode as it is running a single Node Application and using worker threads to process incoming requests?

Answer 1

they basically do the same, PM2 will use Node Cluster under the hood, it will make things easier since you don't have to programmatically handle forking in your code, just run it as is.

note that Cluster Mode will not support session stickiness so make sure your app is stateless.