Axios has a long history, and is included in a lot of code, also in indirect dependencies. Just check its npm page: it has 174025 dependents as of this moment, including a lot of new packages (I see openclaw and mcp related packages in the list).

And with LLMs generating more and more code, the risk of copying old setups increases.

> The amount of people still using this instead of fetch.

People are lazy. And sometimes they find old stuff via a google search and use that.