Key GitHub Statistics in 2023 (Users, Employees, and Trends)

GitHub has long been the go-to platform for storing and sharing code. It enables developers from around the world to create code repositories and collaborate on open-source projects. However, you might be asking yourself: is it still worth the time and effort?

To answer this question, we’ve put together a list of significant GitHub statistics in 2023. These numbers shed light on the platform’s usage and potential and the direction it may take in the future.

So, here are the most important things you need to know about GitHub.

The Most Important GitHub Statistics

GitHub Usage

Before we dive into the statistics, it’s essential to understand the difference between git and GitHub, as the two are often confused.

Git is a version control software for developers, which enables them to keep track of their changes and revert to a previous phase of the project:

Meanwhile, GitHub is a platform that facilitates collaboration among developers that use git. It enables them to work together on development projects and see each other’s changes in real-time:

Now, here are some key GitHub statistics about usage:

• In 2022, there were over 3.5 billion contributions to GitHub Projects, which included commits, issues, pull requests, and more.
• Over 20 percent of contributions were made in public repositories. Meanwhile, the number of contributions to private repositories rose by almost 38 percent compared to 2021.
• In the same year, developers updated 50 percent more vulnerable packages than in 2021, helping to secure 18 million projects on GitHub.
• 88 percent of developers who use GitHub Copilot say that it helps them be more productive and finish projects faster.

GitHub Copilot is an AI tool that uses human language prompts to generate code suggestions and functions. The user can simply tell the tool what they want to achieve and it will provide the code needed to create that function:

This feature is possibly one of the many things that make GitHub such a popular platform among developers, superseding Bitbucket and GitLab in usage numbers. Around 15 million developers use Bitbucket, while GitLab has an estimated 30 million users.

Another standout feature is GitHub Pages, which enables developers to host a static website directly from a repository:

Plus, GitHub is very secure. Users will need to generate SSH keys to access the platform.

GitHub Website Traffic

As the numbers above show, GitHub draws millions of developers from around the world. Let’s take a closer look at its traffic and user behavior.

We’ve run GitHub through HypeStat and these are the numbers:

• Around 1.5 percent of internet users visit GitHub.
• It gets around 14 million visitors and 96,419,713 page impressions per day.
• The majority of visitors are located in the United States, China, and India.
• Each user visits around seven pages and spends approximately seven minutes on GitHub.

These GitHub statistics show that the platform has a high engagement rate. In fact, it has a bounce rate of just 37.30 percent:

These metrics reflect the collaborative nature of the platform. Developers likely spend a lot of time engaging with other users and contributing to different projects.

GitHub Users

GitHub has an international user base, attracting developers from across the globe. The platform provides some interesting details about its developers and where they come from.

Here’s what we know:

• In 2022, 20.5 million new developers joined GitHub, with significant increases in users from China, Brazil, and India.
• India has the biggest developer community on the platform, amounting to more than nine million users.
• Countries in Asia Pacific, Africa, South America, and Europe experienced the largest increase in population growth on GitHub.

GitHub also provides insights into their users’ language preferences:

• The top three programming languages are JavaScript, Python, and Java.
• PHP has decreased in popularity, dropping from sixth to seventh place in 2022.
• The Hashicorp Configuration Language (HCL) is the fastest-growing language on GitHub, with a usage increase of 56.1 percent.
• Rust experienced a growth rate of more than 50 percent, which GitHub attributes to its security and reliability.
• Python continues to grow in popularity, with a 22.5 percent increase per year.

This graph shows the most popular programming languages on GitHub and their usage over the last few years:

The rising popularity of machine learning will likely make Python the leading language in the future.

GitHub Employees

You might be wondering: who are the people behind GitHub?

According to Craft, the company employs around 5,595 people. Meanwhile, GitHub tells us a bit more about its global employee population:

• In 2022, the representation of women at GitHub increased by over 40 percent. Women now represent 23.6 percent of senior leaders at the company.
• The number of black employees grew by 60.3 percent, while the Latinx population increased by 25.5 percent.
• Other minorities at GitHub include Asian (15.6 percent) and Multiracial (4.7 percent).

These GitHub statistics reflect the company’s efforts to support a more inclusive and diverse workforce.

GitHub Revenue

In 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion. The platform now generates one billion dollars in recurring revenue per year.

GitHub makes most of its money through subscription plans and fees on third-party app sales. It offers three types of subscriptions: Free, Team, and Enterprise.

At the time of writing, GitHub’s Team plan starts at $3.67 per user per month:

Meanwhile, the Enterprise plan starts at $19.25 per user per month. This package is built for large businesses with more complex development projects.

Most Popular GitHub Repositories

Repositories contain all the files associated with a project, as well as the revision history of each file. GitHub users are able to access and manage a project through its repository.

Some of these repositories have as many as 20,000 contributors. Here are the five most popular open-source projects on GitHub:

1. microsoft/vscode: Created by Microsoft, this repository is dedicated to developing the Visual Studio Code product.
2. home-assistant/core: A repository for home automation software that prioritizes local control and privacy first.
3. flutter/flutter: This is the repository for Flutter, which is Google’s SDK for creating fast user experiences for mobile and web applications.
4. MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs: This contains the open-source documentation of Microsoft Azure.
5. microsoft/PowerToys: A repository for PowerToys, which is a set of utilities that enables power users to streamline their Windows experience.

As you can see, most of the top projects are backed by large enterprises like Google and Microsoft.

GitHub Stars and Forks

Now, let’s look at GitHub Stars and Forks.

A fork is a copy of an existing repository. When a user forks a project, they make a copy of it in their own GitHub account. This way, they can make changes to a project without affecting the original repository.

The following image shows the 10 most forked projects on GitHub:

Meanwhile, stars are ratings given to GitHub projects. Here are the top 10 projects with the highest number of stars:

There are many reasons why users may choose to ‘star’ a repository. In any case, projects with a high number of stars typically have high-quality and useful content.

GitHub Trends

Finally, let’s look at some GitHub trends and what they mean for the platform’s future.

We’re basing the following predictions on the GitHub statistics presented in this post:

• With 90 percent of Fortune 100 companies using GitHub, more companies will be investing in open-source projects in the future.
• The significant growth of projects like home-assistant/core indicates a growing interest among developers in home automation software.
• Python usage across GitHub has maintained a 22.5 percent annual increase, which will likely get higher thanks to the growing interest in machine learning.
• The largest projects by contributor count are mostly company-led projects, including microsoft/vscode, flutter/flutter, and vercel/next.js. This suggests that many businesses will continue using GitHub to boost growth and visibility and engage with international developers.

It also looks like China and India will soon have a developer population that rivals that of the United States. We can also expect developer communities across the African continent to continue growing as more and more companies are investing in this region.

Summary

The statistics show that GitHub is here to stay. This platform continues to draw millions of developers from different corners of the world, and hundreds of companies are using it to develop open-source projects.

At Kinsta, we offer application hosting and database hosting to help you kickstart your project, providing support for popular programming languages and frameworks. Plus, we make it easy to connect with GitHub and automate project deployments.

Are you ready to start using Kinsta and GitHub for your web development projects? Reach out to our support team and we’ll help you get started!