diff --git a/changelog/8023.improvement.rst b/changelog/8023.improvement.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..8d005ba0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog/8023.improvement.rst
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Added ``'node_modules'`` to default value for ``norecursedirs``.
diff --git a/doc/en/reference.rst b/doc/en/reference.rst
index cbe89fe0b..34be2c454 100644
--- a/doc/en/reference.rst
+++ b/doc/en/reference.rst
@@ -1541,7 +1541,8 @@ passed multiple times. The expected format is ``name=value``. For example::
         [seq]   matches any character in seq
         [!seq]  matches any char not in seq
 
-   Default patterns are ``'.*', 'build', 'dist', 'CVS', '_darcs', '{arch}', '*.egg', 'venv'``.
+   Default patterns are ``'*.egg'``, ``'.*'``, ``'_darcs'``, ``'build'``,
+   ``'CVS'``, ``'dist'``, ``'node_modules'``, ``'venv'``, ``'{arch}'``.
    Setting a ``norecursedirs`` replaces the default.  Here is an example of
    how to avoid certain directories:
 
diff --git a/src/_pytest/main.py b/src/_pytest/main.py
index 04b51ac00..93073226c 100644
--- a/src/_pytest/main.py
+++ b/src/_pytest/main.py
@@ -53,7 +53,17 @@ def pytest_addoption(parser: Parser) -> None:
         "norecursedirs",
         "directory patterns to avoid for recursion",
         type="args",
-        default=[".*", "build", "dist", "CVS", "_darcs", "{arch}", "*.egg", "venv"],
+        default=[
+            "*.egg",
+            ".*",
+            "_darcs",
+            "build",
+            "CVS",
+            "dist",
+            "node_modules",
+            "venv",
+            "{arch}",
+        ],
     )
     parser.addini(
         "testpaths",