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

Apr 5, 2023
GItHub figure learning about key GitHub statistics

To address this issue, we've put together an extensive list of the most important GitHub figures for 2023. The numbers provide insight into the platform's usage and potential as well as the direction it could be heading in the near future.

So, here are the top facts you should be aware of about GitHub.

The Most Important GitHub Statistics

GitHub Usage

Git is a program for controlling version for developers, which enables users to track their changes and revert to an earlier stage of the project

The git homepage
git

Additionally, GitHub is a platform that facilitates collaboration among developers that use git. It enables them to work together on development projects and view each other's progress at a time of real-time:

GitHub homepage
GitHub

Below, you will find key GitHub data on usage

  • In 2022, there was over 3.5 billion contributions to GitHub Projects, which included commits, issues, pull requests, and more.
  • About 20 percent of all contributions were made to public repository. However, the percentage of donations to private repositories rose by almost 38 percent compared to 2021.
  • The same year, developers upgraded 50 percent more vulnerable packages than they did in 2021. It helped to secure 18 million projects on GitHub.
  • 88 percent of developers who use GitHub Copilot affirm that it helps them be more productive and get their projects done more quickly.

GitHub Copilot is an AI software that employs human-like commands to create codes and suggestions for functions. It is easy for users to let the software know what they want to achieve and it will give the code needed to create the function.

GitHub Copilot in action
GitHub Copilot
GitHub Pages repository
GitHub Pages

GitHub Web Traffic

As the numbers above show, GitHub draws millions of developers across the globe. Take a close study of the traffic it receives as well as user behaviour.

We've run GitHub through HypeStat and here are the results:

  • About 1.5 percent of users use GitHub. GitHub.
  • It receives about 14 million visitors and 96,419,713 daily page views.
  • A majority of tourists originate from India, China, United States, China, and India.
  • A typical user will visit seven websites and is on average 7 minutes online on GitHub.

The GitHub data indicate that the platform enjoys a high engagement rate. It actually has a bounce rate of just 37.30 percent.

GitHub traffic statistics on HypeStat
GitHub traffic statistics on HypeStat

The metrics are indicative of how collaborative is the platform. It is likely that developers spend lots of their time communicating with other users as well as contributing to various projects.

GitHub Users

GitHub has a large customer base that draws developers from all over the world. The platform provides some interesting details about its creators as well as where they are from.

This is what we know:

  • The year 2022 will see 20.5 million new developers were added to GitHub and saw significant growth of users coming from China, Brazil, and India.
  • India has the biggest user base of the platforms, and it is home to more than nine million people.
  • The countries of Asia Pacific, Africa, South America, and Europe experienced the largest rise in the population on GitHub.

GitHub offers insights into their language preferences:

  • The Hashicorp Configuration language (HCL) is the fastest-growing language available on GitHub using an rise of 56.1 percent.
  • Python is continuing to increase in popularity increasing by 22.5 percent rise each year.
A graphic showing GitHub language usage from 2014-2022
GitHub language usage from 2014-2022

GitHub Employees

Perhaps you are wondering who is who are behind GitHub?

According to Craft, the company employs approximately 5,595 employees. While, GitHub tells us a bit more about its workforce worldwide:

  • By 2022, the number of women in GitHub has increased by more than 40 percent. Today, women comprise 23.6 percent of senior executives at the company.
  • The number of black employees was up by 60.3 percent, while the Latinx population increased by 25.5 percent.
  • Other minorities on GitHub include Asian (15.6 percent) and Multiracial (4.7 percentage).

These GitHub numbers reflect the company's efforts to create an inclusive and diverse workforce.

GitHub Revenue

In the year 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion. The platform is now generating one billion dollars in revenue recurring each year.

GitHub earns the majority of its revenue by offering subscription plans as well as fees on third-party app sales. The company offers three kinds of subscriptions: Free, Team and Enterprise.

In the moment of writing, GitHub's Team plan begins with $3.67 per user per month:

GitHub pricing plans
GitHub price plans.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise plan begins with $19.25 per month per user. This package is built to accommodate large companies with larger development tasks.

Repositories house all projects' files along with the revision history for every file. GitHub users are able to navigate and access a project by using its repository.

A few repositories on GitHub have up to 20.000 contributors. These are the top five well-known open-source projects available on GitHub:

  1. Microsoft/Vscode: Created by Microsoft the repository is committed to the development of Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code product.
  2. home-assistant/core Repository for home automation software that prioritizes the privacy and control of your home.
  3. Flutter/flutter The HTML0 HTML0 flutter/flutter repository is the Flutter repository that is Google's SDK that allows for fast and efficient user experience for mobile as well as web-based applications.
  4. MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs: This contains the open-source documentation of Microsoft Azure.
  5. Microsoft/PowerToys: A repository for PowerToys, which is the name of a suite of utility programs which allow power users to simplify your Windows experience.

It is evident that many of the most successful projects are funded by major corporations such as Google as well as Microsoft.

GitHub Stars and Forks

We'll now take a look at the GitHub Stars and Forks.

A fork is a replica of the repository that is already in use. If a user forks an existing project, they create copies of the project on their personal GitHub account. In this way, they are able to edit a repository but without altering the source repository.

The following image shows the top 10 most-forked Projects on GitHub:

The 10 most forked projects on GitHub
The top 10 projects that are most popularly forked on GitHub

In addition, they are a way of evaluating GitHub projects. These are the 10 most popular projects with the highest amount of stars:    ZqrHkpaTWoPMDrMigFWG    The projects with the highest star rating on GitHub

There are many reasons why users may choose to 'star the repository. However, the projects which have lots of stars typically have high-quality and useful contents.

In the final section, we'll take a look at some GitHub developments and what they mean for the platform's future.

We're basing the following predictions on GitHub data in this article:

  • 90% of Fortune 100 companies using GitHub, more companies will invest in open-source initiatives in the near future.
  • The significant growth of projects like home-assistant or core shows a rising interest among developers in Home Automation software.
  • Python utilization across the GitHub platform has seen a 22.5 percent growth annually, which will likely get more so due to the increasing demand for machine learning.
  • The most popular projects according to the number of contributors are usually corporate-led, like microsoft/vscode, flutter/flutter, and vercel/next.js. It is likely that many companies will keep using GitHub to increase their growth, exposure and to connect with global developers.

There is also a chance that China as well as India will soon have the same number of developers as that of those in the United States. We can also expect community development across all of the African continent to keep growing because more corporations are investing in this region.

Summary

The statistics show that GitHub is here to stay. The platform is still attracting hundreds of thousands of developers from various corners of the world, and hundreds of companies are using it to develop open-source software.

Are you eager to get started using and GitHub for your web development projects? Reach out to our support staff and we'll assist you in getting started!