What you should know about this indicator
- Respondents chose to take part in the survey, which Stack Overflow promotes mainly through its own website, blog, and email list. They are not a random sample: people who use Stack Overflow often are more likely to see the survey, so the results may not represent all developers worldwide.
- From 2023 to 2025, the survey asked “Do you currently use AI tools in your development process?” In 2025, the “yes” answer was split by how often people use AI tools (daily, weekly, or monthly or less often); we count all of them as using AI tools.
- In 2026, the question became “Do you currently use AI tools or AI agents in your role at work?”, and respondents ticked the kinds of AI tools they use (such as coding assistants or chat tools) or “I don’t use AI tools”. We count everyone who ticked at least one kind of tool as using AI tools.
- From 2023 to 2025, professional developers are respondents who described themselves as “a developer by profession”. The 2026 survey no longer asked this, so for 2026 we use respondents who said they “create code as a primary part of [their] job”.
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Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
We calculate the share from the answers of each respondent, which Stack Overflow publishes. For each year, we keep the professional developers who answered the question, and divide the number who use AI tools by the total.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Share of professional software developers using AI tools”, part of the following publication: Edouard Mathieu, Charlie Giattino, Veronika Samborska, and Max Roser (2023) - “Artificial Intelligence”. Data adapted from Stack Overflow. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261019-110543/grapher/share-of-professional-software-developers-using-ai-tools.html [online resource] (archived on October 19, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
Stack Overflow (2023–2026) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
Stack Overflow (2023–2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Share of professional software developers using AI tools – Stack Overflow” [dataset]. Stack Overflow, “Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2023”; Stack Overflow, “Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024”; Stack Overflow, “Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025”; Stack Overflow, “Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026” [original data]. Retrieved October 19, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261019-110543/grapher/share-of-professional-software-developers-using-ai-tools.html (archived on October 19, 2026).Download
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