Is there a recommended way to update nestjs?

You can use the Nest CLI to update the dependencies:

$ npm install -g @nestjs/cli
$ nest update

You can also $ nest u

As Mick mentioned in his comment, you might have to add --force argument.

nest update --force

Update - July 7 2022

Since v9.0.0 release, the command update was removed. To upgrade your dependencies, you can use dedicated tools like ncu, npm update, yarn upgrade-interactive, etc.

Force update with the command:

nest update -f -t latest

nest info 



_   _             _      ___  _____  _____  _     _____
| \ | |           | |    |_  |/  ___|/  __ \| |   |_   _|
|  \| |  ___  ___ | |_     | |\ `--. | /  \/| |     | |
| . ` | / _ \/ __|| __|    | | `--. \| |    | |     | |
| |\  ||  __/\__ \| |_ /\__/ //\__/ /| \__/\| |_____| |_
\_| \_/ \___||___/ \__|\____/ \____/  \____/\_____/\___/


[System Information]
OS Version     : macOS Catalina
NodeJS Version : v12.16.1
NPM Version    : 6.13.4
[Nest Information]
platform-express version : 7.4.2
microservices version    : 7.4.2
common version           : 7.4.2
core version             : 7.4.2

You can check at this post

Nest Docs: nest update