GitHub is a web-based platform that provides hosting for software development projects and version control using Git. It offers all of the features of Git as well as many additional features to facilitate collaboration, project management, and social coding. GitHub was started in 2008 and has grown rapidly to become the largest host of source code in the world. As of 2023, GitHub reports having over 100 million repositories hosted on the platform, up from around 2.8 million repositories in 2014. This report will provide statistics and key metrics about GitHub’s growth, usage, and impact on software development.
Editors Choice
- GitHub is the world’s largest software development platform, with over 65 million developers.
- GitHub gets over 413 million visits per month, making it the most popular platform for developers.
- During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, most developers worked from home, heavily utilizing GitHub’s remote collaboration features.
- GitHub hosts over 100 million repositories, with 40+ million new repos added in 2020 alone.
- Python emerged as the fastest-growing major programming language, while JavaScript remained the most popular overall.
- The developer community is global, spanning over 200 countries.
- In 2020, 10 million new developers joined the platform and contributed over 430 million times to projects.
- Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018 for $7.5 billion.
- GitHub is widely used in education, with over 100,000 schools utilizing it to teach software development.
- The platform is also used by over 1.5 million organizations for version control and collaborating on software projects.
- Usage of practices like open source, pull requests, and continuous integration increased significantly from 2019 to 2020.
- The average time to approve a pull request decreased to 4.2 hours, showing improved collaboration efficiency.
- Some of the most popular projects on GitHub include React Native, Node.js, and Microsoft’s open-source editor, VSCode.
- The platform’s massive global reach and adoption show GitHub’s dominance as the leading code host and collaboration tool for developers.
- GitHub’s annual recurring revenue has reached $1 billion, demonstrating the platform’s financial success.
- JavaScript remains the most popular programming language used by developers on GitHub, with almost 500 languages total represented on the platform in 2022.
Usage Statistics
- More than 200 million pull requests have been opened on GitHub repositories to date. Pull requests allow developers to collaborate on code changes before they are merged into the main branch. The large number of pull requests demonstrates the extensive use of GitHub for code collaboration.
- Over 96 million branches have been created on GitHub. Branching allows developers to work on separate versions of a repository enabling collaboration and feature development.
- GitHub tracks over 1 billion contributions made each year by users through pushes, pulls, comments, etc. This number has been growing consistently every year.
- In 2022, over 117 million code reviews were performed on GitHub through its code review tools. Reviews are critical for improving code quality.
- More than 2.9 billion contributions have been made to GitHub repositories cumulatively. This includes code commits, pull requests, repository forks, issues opened, etc.
- GitHub tracks over 9 million developers actively working on GitHub repositories each week. This indicates that GitHub is heavily used by developers for day-to-day coding.
- Over 4 billion pull requests have been merged on GitHub to date. Each merged pull request typically represents the acceptance of contributed code into a project.
Project Management Usage
- More than 160 million issues have been opened on GitHub repositories for tracking bugs, tasks, feature requests, etc. Issues allow transparent project management.
- There are over 110 million pull requests still open on GitHub. This demonstrates the substantial use of GitHub for ongoing development and collaboration.
- GitHub tracks over 3.5 billion issue comments made on projects to date. Comments facilitate conversations around issues and pulls.
- Custom labels are used over 260 million times on GitHub issues and pull requests to categorize and organize them. Labels help streamline project workflow.
- Project boards based on the Kanban methodology are used over 4 million times on GitHub for project planning and tracking.
Social Coding Impact
- GitHub repositories have been forked over 200 million times. Forking allows developers to easily copy an existing repository and build upon it. This facilitates open-source contribution.
- There have been over 2.2 billion social reactions on GitHub through comments, emojis, etc. Reactions allow users to interact with others on repositories.
- GitHub hosts over 2,400 open-source organizations for collaboration on open-source software projects. The GitHub platform has transformed open-source development.
- Over 1.9 million open-source contributors have been sponsored through GitHub sponsors to date. GitHub sponsorship helps provide financial support for open-source developers.
- GitHub discussion forums have accumulated over 100 million comments to facilitate community engagement around projects.
Github Stars and forks
Stars and forks are vital elements of the GitHub platform, enabling collaborative open-source development efforts as well as tracking. Stars allow users to bookmark repositories that they support or interested them with, showing support or interest for projects through this simple “like” system. They also help in tracking repositories’ activity with updates about them available within this system.
(Source: kinsta)
Forks are also essential parts of GitHub’s collaborative nature; when users fork a repository they create an independent copy under their account for independent development and contributions. This process facilitates open-source development as it allows developers to make modifications or develop features independently before proposing these changes through pull requests.
(Source: kinsta)
Github Revenue
- Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion
- GitHub earns $1 billion in annual recurring revenue
- GitHub has over 90 million active users
- GitHub is an open-source platform for software development across any platform
- Users can communicate with the Microsoft team an average of 1,500 times per month
Most Popular GitHub Repositories As Of 2023
- freeCodeCamp – Open source codebase and curriculum for learning full stack web development. Over 320,000 stars.
- flutter – Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful mobile, web, and desktop apps in Dart. Over 166,000 stars.
- Django – The web framework for perfectionists with deadlines. Over 69,000 stars.
- Tensorflow – End-to-end open-source platform for machine learning. Over 164,000 stars.
- Rails – Ruby on Rails, the web app development framework. Over 46,000 stars.
- vuejs/vue – Progressive JavaScript framework for building UIs. Over 191,000 stars.
- ReactTraining/react-router – Declarative routing for React apps. Over 34,000 stars.
- facebook/react-native – Framework for building native apps with React. Over 98,000 stars.
- twbs/bootstrap – popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive projects on the web. Over 153,000 stars.
- Atom – Hackable text editor for the 21st century. Over 58,000 stars.
GitHub Website Traffic 2023
- Approximately 1.5% of all internet users actively use GitHub, illustrating the platform’s popularity among developers.
- GitHub receives over 14 million visitors and page impressions daily, pointing to rapidly growing traffic volumes.
- The US, China, and India generate the most visitors, representing GitHub’s largest country markets.
GitHub Demographics
GitHub security statistics
- Over 6 million dependencies are monitored daily for vulnerabilities using GitHub’s dependency graph. This allows early detection of outdated or compromised libraries.
- In 2022, GitHub acted on 90 million alerts to proactively secure repositories and prevent exploits. This indicates the scale of their automated security measures.
- Approximately 2.5 million security vulnerabilities were discovered and remediated last year via automated security fixes and pull requests.
- GitHub provides over 50 security tools and features for developers to embed security in the software lifecycle like dependable, code scanning, etc.
- The site maintains a 99.99% uptime record and infrastructure security compliance through rigorous penetration testing.
- All transmission of data is encrypted end-to-end using industry-standard TLS protocols to prevent leaks.
- Role-based access control and 2FA enable secure access control across private repositories and organizations.
- GitHub’s bug bounty program has over $1 million in rewards paid out to researchers detecting vulnerabilities.
- The platform utilizes AI to screen all projects for potential abuse like malware distribution.
GitHub Users
- Over 96 million total users, making it the largest host of source code in the world.
- Over 90 million active monthly users contribute to public and private repositories.
- Over 65 million users have contributed to or maintained open-source projects on GitHub.
- 1.8+ million organizations use GitHub for private development and collaboration.
- The US accounts for most GitHub users at over 25 million, followed by India, China, Germany, and the UK.
- User growth rate averaged around 20-30% annually over the past 5 years.
- Almost 3 million new users joined GitHub in 2022 alone.
- Users have created over 270 million repositories on GitHub to store and manage code.
- On average, each GitHub user contributes to 9 repositories indicating widespread collaboration.
- Over 60 million developers have been trained on GitHub through GitHub Learning.
- 73% of professional developers have a GitHub account according to recent surveys.
Latest Development in GitHub
Coinbase’s new Ethereum L2 scaling solution, Base, has open-sourced its smart contract code and GitHub repository.
Coinbase has open-sourced the smart contract code and GitHub repository for its new Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) scaling solution, Base. This means that anyone can now view and contribute to the development of the Base codebase.
The base is an L2 network built on OP Stack in collaboration with Optimism. It is designed to offer a safe, low-cost, and developer-friendly way to build on-chain. The base is still under development, but it is already being used by a number of projects, including Coinbase Wallet and Coinbase NFT.
The open-sourcing of the Base codebase is a significant step towards making the network more decentralized and transparent. It also allows developers to participate in the development of the network and to build new and innovative applications on top of it.
GitHub’s secret scanning feature
GitHub’s secret scanning feature has been expanded to cover secrets from a wider range of service providers, including AWS, Google, Microsoft, and more. This means that GitHub can now help you to identify and protect a wider range of secrets in your code, including:
- AWS access keys and secret access keys
- Google Cloud Platform service account keys and API keys
- Microsoft Azure service connection strings and API keys
- Docker Hub registry tokens
- npm registry tokens
- GitHub Personal Access Tokens
This expansion of the secret scanning feature is a welcome addition, as it helps to make GitHub a more comprehensive security solution for developers. It is also important to note that the secret scanning feature is free to use on all public repositories, and is available for private and internal repositories for organizations with a license for GitHub Advanced Security.
Here are some of the benefits of using GitHub’s secret scanning feature:
- It can help you to identify and protect secrets in your code before they are accidentally leaked.
- It can help you comply with security regulations, such as PCI DSS and GDPR.
- It can help you to reduce the risk of data breaches and other security incidents.
Conclusion
GitHub has transformed software development and collaboration, proving itself as the most popular and widely adopted platform for developers worldwide. Its massive growth to over 90 million users demonstrates GitHub’s immense value in enabling effective remote teamwork, open-source contribution, and streamlined project management. Looking ahead, GitHub is well-positioned to further extend its reach across developer communities globally as new functionalities and integrations continue to evolve. The platform’s proven success has solidified its status as an indispensable tool for programmers and tech organizations of all sizes. With over 65 million developers already relying on GitHub, its dominance as the leading code host and collaboration service seems firmly cemented.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Kundan Goyal possesses a wealth of experience in Digital Marketing, offering valuable insights to businesses of all sizes. He actively contributes to industry-specific PR, news outlets, and forums, shaping discussions and driving forward-thinking strategies. Outside of work, HE enjoys carrom and has a deep passion for news editing and research. His strength lies in helping companies make informed, strategic decisions and predicting future trends. With his dedication and innovative approach, he is a versatile professional who brings a unique blend of skills and expertise to the ever-evolving digital landscape, enabling businesses to thrive in this dynamic environment.
