diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index b3e7311ec..ee7ddf653 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 
 - #895 patchedast Starred and keyword now consumes their syntactically expected and ** (@lieryan)
 - #896 patchedast cleanup and refactoring (@lieryan)
+- #905 Ignore `node_modules` directories by default when scanning project files and source folders. (@marcoeangeli)
 
 # Release 1.15.0
 
diff --git a/docs/configuration.rst b/docs/configuration.rst
index a62b4afbf..dae748b54 100644
--- a/docs/configuration.rst
+++ b/docs/configuration.rst
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ It will be used if ``[tool.rope]`` is not present in ``pyproject.toml`` or ``pyp
             ".tox",
             ".venv",
             "venv",
+            "node_modules",
         ]
 
 Additionally, you can run an executable function at startup of rope.
diff --git a/docs/default_config.py b/docs/default_config.py
index b2b3377ea..f94e34d1c 100644
--- a/docs/default_config.py
+++ b/docs/default_config.py
@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ def set_prefs(prefs):
     #        "venv",
     #        ".mypy_cache",
     #        ".pytest_cache",
+    #        "node_modules",
     #    ]
 
     # Specifies which files should be considered python files.  It is
diff --git a/rope/base/prefs.py b/rope/base/prefs.py
index 787cce497..6c1663c88 100644
--- a/rope/base/prefs.py
+++ b/rope/base/prefs.py
@@ -67,6 +67,7 @@ class Prefs:
             "venv",
             ".mypy_cache",
             ".pytest_cache",
+            "node_modules",
         ],
         description=dedent("""
             Specify which files and folders to ignore in the project.