Tony Wang11 min readWhere the World's Developers Actually Live: A Census of 973K GitHub Profiles
We enriched 972,576 public GitHub profiles: geography, employers, and a follower distribution so skewed that 95% of developers sit under 100 followers.
Every "GitHub statistics 2026" post cites the same Octoverse numbers — total developers, repos created, commits pushed, Copilot seats. All of it describes activity, and none of it says where developers actually live, who they work for, or how skewed influence really is on the platform. So we built that picture from the profiles themselves: an enrichment pass over 972,576 public GitHub developer profiles, geocoded from their own self-declared location and scored for influence and recent activity.
Developer geography: a quarter of the platform, mapped
Most developers don't say where they live — only 27.2% publish any location text at all. Of those who do, geocoding resolves 97.1% cleanly to a country, giving a real (if partial) picture of where GitHub's public developer population actually sits:
Show the data
| United States (44.0K) | 43996% |
| India (32.9K) | 32915% |
| Brazil (15.1K) | 15069% |
| China (13.2K) | 13205% |
| Germany (11.9K) | 11861% |
| United Kingdom (9.6K) | 9561% |
| France (8.3K) | 8329% |
| Canada (7.3K) | 7311% |
| Indonesia (5.8K) | 5771% |
| Japan (5.7K) | 5684% |
| Spain (5.1K) | 5117% |
| South Korea (5.0K) | 5026% |
| Australia (4.1K) | 4080% |
| Vietnam (3.9K) | 3935% |
| Netherlands (3.7K) | 3655% |
| Bangladesh (3.6K) | 3579% |
| Italy (3.4K) | 3361% |
| Poland (3.3K) | 3313% |
| Russia (3.3K) | 3309% |
| Argentina (3.2K) | 3180% |
The US and India together account for 29.9% of every geo-resolved developer — but the shape of the rest of the list is where it gets interesting. Indonesia (5,771) and Bangladesh (3,579) rank above several wealthy European economies, and Vietnam (3,935) sits just behind Netherlands (3,655). Public GitHub activity in South and Southeast Asia is already a bigger presence than most "where are the developers" narratives assume.
Show the full 49-country table
| Country | Developers | Share of geo-resolved |
|---|---|---|
| United States (US) | 43,996 | 17.2% |
| India (IN) | 32,915 | 12.8% |
| Brazil (BR) | 15,069 | 5.9% |
| China (CN) | 13,205 | 5.1% |
| Germany (DE) | 11,861 | 4.6% |
| United Kingdom (GB) | 9,561 | 3.7% |
| France (FR) | 8,329 | 3.2% |
| Canada (CA) | 7,311 | 2.9% |
| Indonesia (ID) | 5,771 | 2.2% |
| Japan (JP) | 5,684 | 2.2% |
| Spain (ES) | 5,117 | 2.0% |
| South Korea (KR) | 5,026 | 2.0% |
| Australia (AU) | 4,080 | 1.6% |
| Vietnam (VN) | 3,935 | 1.5% |
| Netherlands (NL) | 3,655 | 1.4% |
| Bangladesh (BD) | 3,579 | 1.4% |
| Italy (IT) | 3,361 | 1.3% |
| Poland (PL) | 3,313 | 1.3% |
| Russia (RU) | 3,309 | 1.3% |
| Argentina (AR) | 3,180 | 1.2% |
| Pakistan (PK) | 3,066 | 1.2% |
| Switzerland (CH) | 2,546 | 1.0% |
| Nigeria (NG) | 2,414 | 0.9% |
| Colombia (CO) | 2,146 | 0.8% |
| Sweden (SE) | 2,126 | 0.8% |
| Mexico (MX) | 2,120 | 0.8% |
| Türkiye (TR) | 2,048 | 0.8% |
| Ukraine (UA) | 1,870 | 0.7% |
| Taiwan (TW) | 1,788 | 0.7% |
| Philippines (PH) | 1,727 | 0.7% |
| Portugal (PT) | 1,516 | 0.6% |
| Egypt (EG) | 1,499 | 0.6% |
| Singapore (SG) | 1,449 | 0.6% |
| Norway (NO) | 1,431 | 0.6% |
| Sri Lanka (LK) | 1,426 | 0.6% |
| Czechia (CZ) | 1,355 | 0.5% |
| Belgium (BE) | 1,294 | 0.5% |
| Kenya (KE) | 1,274 | 0.5% |
| Austria (AT) | 1,248 | 0.5% |
| Thailand (TH) | 1,129 | 0.4% |
| South Africa (ZA) | 1,123 | 0.4% |
| Denmark (DK) | 1,102 | 0.4% |
| Chile (CL) | 1,088 | 0.4% |
| Israel (IL) | 1,071 | 0.4% |
| Finland (FI) | 1,012 | 0.4% |
| Peru (PE) | 992 | 0.4% |
| New Zealand (NZ) | 965 | 0.4% |
| Ireland (IE) | 943 | 0.4% |
| Malaysia (MY) | 868 | 0.3% |
| Romania (RO) | 854 | 0.3% |
Who they work for
Company affiliation is self-reported in a developer's bio, so this reflects who chooses to name their employer publicly — open-source-forward companies dominate the list:
Red Hat edging out Microsoft is a tell about culture, not payroll size — Red Hat's entire business model runs on public upstream contribution, so its engineers have both permission and professional incentive to attach their employer to a public profile. A company with the same GitHub headcount but a closed-source product line would show up far lower on this list simply because its developers have less reason to say where they work.
By self-declared interest domain, backend (34,916 profiles) and ML/AI (28,603) lead, with frontend (25,254) close behind — DevOps, mobile, security, data, web3 and game dev make up a long tail from there.
Influence is one of the steepest power laws in tech
The follower distribution on GitHub makes Zipf's law look gentle. Across all 970,617 queryable profiles, 95.3% sit under 100 followers:
The average developer has 19 followers. The 99th percentile is 277. And exactly nine accounts on the entire platform break 100,000 followers — a mega tier so small it fits in one screenshot:
| Login | Name | Followers | Affiliation |
|---|---|---|---|
| torvalds | Linus Torvalds | 310,536 | Linux Foundation · United States |
| claude | Claude | 124,709 | Anthropic |
| ruanyf | Ruan YiFeng | 86,825 | China |
| sindresorhus | Sindre Sorhus | 79,849 | Open-source maintainer |
| bradtraversy | Brad Traversy | 76,062 | Traversy Media · United States |
| JakeWharton | Jake Wharton | 68,380 | United States |
| lucidrains | Phil Wang | 61,064 | ML / AI · United States |
| steipete | Peter Steinberger | 52,078 | United Kingdom |
| addyosmani | Addy Osmani | 50,700 | Google · United States |
| geohot | George Hotz | 46,890 | comma.ai · United States |
Linus Torvalds tops the list by a wide margin at 310,536 — not surprising for the person who created both Linux and Git. What's more telling is who fills out the rest of the top 10: open-source maintainers (Sindre Sorhus), educators (Brad Traversy), and individual ML researchers (Phil Wang, George Hotz) rank above most corporate accounts. On GitHub, sustained public output and teaching earn more followers than institutional affiliation.
This is a live-developer index, not a sign-up graveyard
908,319 of the 970,617 queryable profiles — 93.6% — pushed code, opened a pull request, or reviewed one in the last 90 days. That bar (real recent activity, not "account exists since 2014") is what separates this dataset from a raw sign-up count: it's measuring developers who are still building, not everyone who ever created an account.
Reachability is more selective. 205,889 profiles (21.2%) expose any public contact channel; 164,684 (17.0%) list a blog or personal site; 73,102 (7.5%) mark themselves open to hire; and only 33,843 (3.5%) publish a public email directly on their profile. Twitter/X handles sit at 54,883 (5.7%) — a reminder that most of the developers who are reachable prefer a blog link over a direct handle or email.
What this means if you're recruiting, sponsoring, or building on top of GitHub
For technical recruiting, the geography data reframes where to look: India and Brazil are not "emerging" developer markets by public-profile count, they're already the 2nd and 3rd largest. For OSS sponsorship and DevRel targeting, the follower power law means almost any influence-based outreach list should be built from the top 5% (100+ followers) — the bottom 95% functionally never differ from each other on this axis, so follower count is a poor filter below that line. And for anyone building a "top developers" or "GitHub leaderboard" product, this data makes clear that raw follower count rewards longevity and content output over current contribution — cross-reference with active_90d if the goal is finding developers who are currently shipping, not developers who were famous once.
For an AI/ML-specific cut of this same census — India, not the US, has the most AI developers on GitHub — see how the geography and reachability patterns shift when filtered to the ml-ai interest domain.
Query the full GitHub Users dataset
972,576 enriched developer profiles — geography, employer, influence tier, activity and reachability — over one REST API. Public profile fields only.
Frequently asked questions
How many developers are on GitHub in 2026?
Crawlora's enrichment pass indexed 972,576 public GitHub profiles (970,617 after excluding 1,959 suspected-automation accounts). Only 27.2% publish any location string, and of those, 97.1% resolve cleanly to a country - so the geography figures describe roughly a quarter of the platform, the quarter willing to say where they are.
Which countries have the most GitHub developers?
Among geo-resolved profiles, the United States leads with 43,996, followed by India (32,915), Brazil (15,069), China (13,205), and Germany (11,861). The US and India together account for nearly 30% of every geo-resolved developer.
How many followers does the average GitHub developer have?
19, and the distribution is one of the steepest power laws in tech: 95.3% of developers have fewer than 100 followers, and only 9 accounts on the entire platform break 100,000. The 99th percentile sits at just 277 followers.
Who is the most-followed developer on GitHub?
Linus Torvalds (torvalds), creator of Linux and Git, with 310,536 followers - more than double the second-place account. The rest of the top 10 skews toward open-source maintainers and educators (Sindre Sorhus, Brad Traversy) over corporate accounts.
What percentage of GitHub developers are actively coding?
93.6% (908,319 of 970,617 queryable profiles) pushed code, opened a pull request, or reviewed one in the last 90 days - this is a live-developer index measuring current activity, not a count of every account ever created.