Global developer population trends 2025 - How many developers are there?

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Getting started & quick developer population estimation methodology overview

Moschoula

Hi everyone. Welcome back to SlashData's webinar series for 2025. For those who aren't familiar with us and are joining for the first time, SlashData is a market research firm active in the technology community for nearly 20 years. We serve the technology community, helping companies make data-backed, high-impact decisions with confidence. We help you understand your customers, your users, your decision-makers, and guide everything from product design to marketing strategies. We will continue this series throughout the year, so stay tuned and join our newsletter to get invited to the next sessions.

Without further ado, we have our Director of Research here today, Kostas Korakitis. He will end the long-winded debate on software developer populations. There has been a ton of discussion on the number of developers and whether that's been declining over the last couple of years—and even faster day by day. With the introduction of a massive wave of AI-assisted coding tools, this has become a big issue. So we want to talk about it as well and end that debate. I don't think we need anything else; I'll hand it over to Kostas. Thanks a lot, see you later.

Kostas Korakitis

Thank you, Moschoula, and hi everyone. Welcome to today's webinar on global developer population trends. As Moschoula said, I'm Kostas Korakitis, Director of Research at SlashData. Over the next half-hour or so, we are going to explore how the global developer population has evolved over the past three years: what's driving this growth, where it's happening, and how its composition, focus, and geography are changing.

Let me first quickly walk you through what we will cover today. I'll start with a brief description of our developer population sizing methodology—essentially, how we derive the population estimates that I will present today. Then we'll look at how the developer population has grown over the past three years and how the balance between professionals and amateur developers has shifted. We'll then present several breakdowns of the global developer population by important dimensions, such as region, types of software development projects, programming language communities, industry verticals, and company size.

First, on our population sizing methodology—how we arrive at our estimates. We calculate the number of active software developers globally using our own independent bottom-up methodology, firmly rooted in reliable measurement through our Global Developer Survey. We're not just using available third-party population estimates; we derive our own estimates independently.

Our methodology is based on two main pillars. First, we make use of reliable sources of developer numbers or direct indicators of their activity. This includes the number of GitHub accounts, Stack Overflow accounts, and employment statistics from the USA and the European Union. Second, we rely on our Global Developer Survey data, where we directly measure developer activity. So far, we've run 29 waves of this large survey, and in each, we reach more than 10,000 developers globally. We combine these two main sources to derive our estimates.

One important point is that we avoid making assumptions about similarities between geographies or other subsets of the developer population. For example, while we use employment statistics from the EU and USA, we do not extrapolate to other regions. Instead, we rely on measurements from our surveys about the geographic distributions of developers to estimate numbers by region.

There are 47.2 million developers in the world in 2025

With that, let's begin with one of the most important questions: How many developers are there globally? According to our data, at the beginning of this year, we estimate the global developer population at just over 47 million. That's a striking increase of about 50% from Q1 2022, when the number was just over 31 million. Such growth is impressive in any sector, but particularly for developers—it shows how pervasive software development has become in shaping the global economy.

How the developer economy and population is growing in 2025

However, while the three-year growth curve looks impressive, it's even more revealing to see how growth rates have changed over time. Between 2022 and 2023, we saw an increase of 15%. Then, from 2023 to 2024, there was a sharp spike—21% in just one year—likely fueled by post-pandemic investments, startup funding booms, and surging demand for digital services. However, in the last 12 months, the growth rate has decelerated to just 10%. This slowdown may mark the beginning of a new phase: a plateau. A cooling global economy, saturation in mature markets, or diminishing returns on digital investments could all be contributors.

This doesn't necessarily mean the developer economy is in decline, but it does suggest that we should temper expectations for continued exponential growth. The immediate implication is that opportunities may shift from quantity to quality. That is, how companies train, retain, and support developers will become more important than simply how many are entering the field.

This slowing of growth becomes even more meaningful when we dig into who is driving the expansion. What we see is a clear divergence: the professional segment is expanding, while the amateur segment has begun to contract. From early 2022 to early 2025, the number of professional developers grew significantly—by 70%—from 21.8 million to 36.5 million. By contrast, the population of amateur developers only grew moderately and actually declined by over 1 million in the last year.

This is a telling sign: professional developers are staying longer and growing in numbers, while the traditional feeder population—amateurs—is shrinking. There are many forces at play. In the past decade, software development has become a stable career path. More people are attending university or boot camps with the express goal of becoming software developers, building long-term careers around it.

Is the developer economy reaching maturity levels?

At the same time, there's been a cultural shift. Coding is less about exploration and more associated with work, startups, and monetisation. Younger audiences now have many more ways to express their creativity—through game mods or design tools—than simply by coding. This shift could pose a risk to the long-term pipeline. If fewer people explore programming today, fewer professionals may enter the field tomorrow. While the professional population is growing now, declining engagement at the entry level is a red flag. Unless companies invest in developer education and make entry points more accessible, we may face stagnation or even decline in future years.

This brings us to another related trend: the ageing of the developer population. At the beginning of 2022, developers aged 18–24 made up close to a third of the global population. By early 2025, they represent only 23%—a drop of eight percentage points in just three years. Meanwhile, the share of developers aged 35–44 has steadily climbed from 22% to 26%.

The overall picture is clear: fewer young people are entering development, and more experienced developers are staying. The population is gradually aging, growing more seasoned, and becoming more professionalised. There are benefits—deeper experience, more institutional knowledge, more stable career paths. These developers are leading teams, driving architectural decisions, and mentoring others.

However, the concern again is about sustainability. If fewer younger developers replace retirements and transitions, we may face long-term shortages. This also impacts companies offering developer tools and platforms. As developers grow older and more experienced, their learning and tooling preferences shift. There's less focus on quick experimentation and more on robust, reliable tooling and long-term support, including high-quality documentation. Companies that want to stay close to this evolving community need to account for these shifts in priorities.

Geographical distribution of developers

When we look at how developers are distributed geographically, we see a rich and evolving map of the global developer population. Western Europe and North America remain the largest communities, with about 9.5 million developers each. These markets have long been centres of software innovation and continue to be deeply influential.

Western Europe and North America remain the largest communities, with about 9.5 million developers each.

However, growth is happening in other regions too. South Asia, for example, has nearly doubled in size—from 4 million developers in 2022 to 7.5 million today—largely driven by India’s massive and increasingly sophisticated tech workforce. The region combines a young, dynamic workforce, strong STEM education, and a growing ecosystem of startups and tech giants.

Greater China has seen explosive growth as well, nearly tripling its developer population since 2022—from 2.4 million to 5.8 million developers. This reflects China's investment in developer education, homegrown platforms, and government-backed initiatives.

South America has also grown steadily, from 1.7 million developers to 3.4 million over three years. Countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia are emerging as tech outsourcing hubs, with strong local demand in industries like FinTech and mobile solutions.

The takeaway is clear: while Western markets remain dominant in size, the fastest growth and most dynamic momentum are coming from Asia and Latin America.

What developers are working on in 2025

Now let's turn our attention and focus on what developers are actually working on—the types of projects they're involved in. First of all, it's perhaps unsurprising that the most popular application area is web. Over 23 million developers are working on front-end and back-end applications.

Over 23 million developers are working on front-end and back-end applications.

Right behind them are backend services and data science and ML/AI applications. However, what's perhaps a bit more interesting is that the top sectors—the most popular sectors—are the ones that are rising fast and declining. So let's talk about the fast risers first.

Here we see that the development of applications and extensions for third-party ecosystems has seen steady growth since 2022. This sector includes things like extensions for commerce platforms like Shopify, extensions for IDEs, browser add-ons, and so on.

Developers are really finding value in building on top of existing platforms where user bases are already established. This is a model that offers distribution, monetization, and low go-to-market friction. Another fast-growing area is embedded software, where the population involved in these types of projects has more than doubled since 2022. This growth reflects the rise of connected devices, automotive systems, and custom hardware. From consumer electronics to industrial sensors, embedded development is moving into the mainstream.

Now the flip side: some projects have seen a decline. For example, mobile app development has slipped slightly in the last year. In previous years the growth was modest, but recently we've seen a downturn. This might be due to market saturation, app store consolidation, or even the rising costs of user acquisition.

Similarly, desktop apps have seen a decline in the number of developers involved. This reflects the long-term trend away from native desktop software applications and toward web-based or cross-platform solutions.

The message here is that developer interest, although still strong in traditional application areas, is slowly shifting toward other paradigms—especially those offering integration, automation, and ecosystem leverage.

The most used programming languages

Now, another question we often get is to size specific language communities. JavaScript continues to hold the top spot in terms of number of users, with 20 to 28 million users and healthy growth over the last three years. Java and Python have been in the top three for a while now. Both show steady and healthy growth since 2022, and each now has around 23 million users. These languages have wide applicability, strong communities, and very mature ecosystems.

If we focus on growth rates, we find some interesting insights. Rust stands out as the fastest-growing of the major languages—those with over 5 million users—more than doubling in size since 2022. That growth is driven by Rust’s focus on safety, performance, and concurrency. It’s becoming the go-to choice for systems programming, embedded development, and blockchain infrastructure.

C++ is another fast-growing language. Although often seen as a legacy language, it remains relevant. It has grown from 9.4 million developers in 2022 to 16.3 million in 2025. This reflects its continued importance in high-performance applications, gaming, and modern embedded systems where performance and efficiency are critical.

Developer preferences are diversifying. It's not just about picking the most popular language—it's about choosing the right tool for the right job.

So the key takeaway is that developer preferences are diversifying. It's not just about picking the most popular language—it's about choosing the right tool for the right job. Developers often use multiple languages at once, depending on the projects they work on.

The most popular industries that attract developers

Moving our attention to the industry verticals developers are active in, we see that software products and services is by far the largest vertical, with nearly 14 million developers. That’s expected, as it's the core of the tech economy.

Software products and services is by far the largest vertical, with nearly 14 million developers.

But beyond that, we see important growth in other verticals too. For example, manufacturing has nearly doubled its developer population in just three years—from just over 2 million developers to nearly 4 million in 2025. This is largely driven by Industry 4.0, where connected factories, automation, and robotics make software a central pillar of production.

Telecommunication and networks have also seen strong growth. As telcos embrace 5G, edge computing, and software-defined infrastructure, they’re hiring developers to manage increasingly complex systems.

Data analytics and BI is another fast riser. The number of developers in this sector has grown from 4 million to 5.8 million in three years. As every company becomes a data company, demand for people who can extract insights continues to rise.

In short, software is no longer confined to the tech sector. Every industry is becoming digital, and every digital strategy needs developers to bring it to life.

The size of companies developers work for

Finally, let’s look at where developers are working. Medium-sized businesses—those with 51 to 1,000 employees—are the fastest-growing employers of developers. This group has expanded to 14.5 million developers at the beginning of 2025. Large enterprises also continue to grow, employing 7.5 million developers today. Together, these two segments account for over 60% of all professional developers globally.

Small businesses and freelancers have remained relatively stable. This may point to consolidation in the industry, higher costs for independent developers, or more structured employment paths.

This tells us that innovation is no longer just the domain of startups or tech giants. Mid-sized businesses are becoming innovation hubs. They’re growing fast, hiring aggressively, and often have the flexibility to explore new technologies without the red tape of large enterprise environments. For companies building software tools and platforms, this middle tier is a sweet spot. They’re large enough to have impact but nimble enough to adopt and scale quickly.

Key takeaways and summary for software developer trends in 2025

This brings me to the end of the presentation. We've covered a lot. We started with the explosive growth of the developer population, then looked at signs of potential slowdown and stagnation. We saw that this growth is primarily driven by professionals, while the amateur segment is shrinking, and the developer community is gradually becoming older.

We also looked at regional shifts—where the strongest growth is happening. We explored how developers are expanding into new types of software development, how language preferences are evolving, which industries are growing fast, and how medium-sized businesses are becoming centres of innovation.

One of the main takeaways is that the developer economy isn’t just growing—it’s transforming. The era of rapid expansion is giving way to maturity, specialisation, and deep integration with all facets of industry and society. So understanding developers—what drives them, where they work, what projects they're involved in, and their technology choices—is more critical than ever. Thank you. I’d love to open the floor for questions now.

Q&A with the expert

Moschoula

Thank you so much, Kostas, for that presentation. Indeed, it’s extremely insightful, especially at this time. I want to revisit something as well. You gave a clear view that while there is still growth, it’s declining. But not necessarily in population yet—we’re not there. Is there any forecast for when growth is estimated to stagnate?

Our view is different from some others who are claiming the developer population is decreasing by the millions. We don’t see that in the data. From what we’ve seen and what your team has found, there's a slowdown, but what do you see for the next few years?

Kostas Korakitis

Yes, that’s a good point. This is something people talk about a lot—that the developer population is shrinking. But this is not what we see in the numbers. A slowdown is evident—we've seen it over the past year.

It’s always hard to predict exactly what will happen, but if the slowdown continues at the same rate, then in a year or two, we may reach the point where the population is no longer growing. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will decline, but stagnation is a likely scenario.

Moschoula

Thank you for that. I also want to go back to the topic of programming languages. Understanding the size of programming language communities is probably the most popular data point that we—and our community—look at regularly. You mentioned Rust being the fastest growing, and touched on what’s next. But what about visual tools and C++—how do you justify their growth?

Kostas Korakitis

Yes, one thing I didn’t cover in detail is visual tools, which have seen really fast growth over the last three years. In 2022, they had 5 million users, and now we’re close to 9 million. That’s very impressive growth.

This is proof that more people are using no-code or low-code platforms. More than anything, it expands the definition of who a developer is. In our survey, we use “developer” in a broad sense—anyone involved in software development projects in any capacity.

The number of people using visual tools, who may not be traditional coders, is increasing. They're using no-code platforms to build business apps, automate tasks, and contribute to digital workflows. This is a real shift. We’ve been hearing about the rise of no-code tools, and now we’re seeing the data to back it up.

Moschoula

Really interesting and impactful. This is extremely useful information and very helpful in validating some of those numbers for us.

Okay, I don’t see any more questions today, so we can close the webinar. We hope you all got a lot out of it. This will be available as a recording after the live session.

Join our newsletter and keep up to date with new webinars—we’ve got a few exciting ones coming up with our partners. You'll hear more soon. Thank you all, and have a great day. Bye for now.

About the expert

Kostas Korakitis, Director of Research at SlashData

Konstantinos heads the Research Product team at SlashData and is responsible for all syndicated research products and custom research projects. With more than 10 years of experience as an engineer, consultant and manager, he oversees research planning, survey design, data analysis, insights generation and research operations.