The results of 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey paint a very detailed picture of the software development landscape. The survey also asks questions about developers' use of Stack Overflow in its role as "a foundational, long-term resource for developers."

It is no secret that Stack Overflow, which under the of leadership  Joel Spolsky had established itself the goto resource for developers, has been in decline. This chart reveals the decrease in the number of questions and answers posted on the site since a local high in 2018.

The section of the 2025 Developer Survey devoted to Stack Overflow itself opens with the results of the question "Do you have a Stack Overflow" account and the report casts the result from in a very positive light with:

A vast majority (81%) have an account, up from 76% in 2024 and 74% in 2023.

This could, of course, be interpreted differently as the survey  attracted around 5% fewer respondents from social media and other sources who didn't have a Stack Overflow account than in the previous two years!

The key indicator of the state of Stack Overflow is probably the frequency of visiting the site for information. These are the results for the question "How frequently would you say you visit Stack Overflow?" answered by 32,661 respondents in 2025: 

Again the report comes up with an optimistic interpretation with:

A strong majority (82%) visit at least a few times per month, with 25% visiting daily or more often.

Contrast this, however, with the corresponding chart from the 2018 survey with the answers from 76,811 respondents:

Back then the most popular response was "Daily or almost daily", 32.5% with almost as many choosing "Multiple times per day" (31.1%) so the same sentence would be written:

Almost all developers (97.5%) visit at least a few times per month, with 63.6% visiting daily or more often. 

Looking at levels of participation on Stack Overflow the contrast between 2018 and 2025 is equally depressing. Back in 2018 the report noted:

Over 40% of survey respondents participate on Stack Overflow a few times per month or more often.

Now the same sentence would have to start with "Under 10%".

The 2025 Survey also reveals a problem regarding the age profile of Stack Overflow membership.  Again the report paints a positive picture stating: 

The Stack Overflow user base is deeply tenured: 76% have used the site for 6 or more years, with 45% having used it for over 11 years.

The corollary of this is that Stack Overflow could be that Stack Overflow isn't attracting enough new users or that it isn't retaining users. One reason for this, revealed by comparing 2025 with 2018 is the decline in StackOverflow sense of community. In 2018 55% of respondents said Yes to the question "Do you consider yourself a member of the Stack Overflow community?", this year it was 33% overall and only 28% among those who had used it for between 1 and 5 years.

Finding something positive to comment on the report states:

While respondents who have participated in the community longer are more likely to consider themselves part of the community, newer users are showing slightly elevated community sentiment, which could be a result of the expansion of features like Staging Ground.

If you've not come across Staging Ground, it was introduced in June 2024 as a private space designed to help new users improve their questions before they are posted publicly to the main site. Its primary goal is to provide a safer, more positive onboarding experience for new users and to improve the overall quality of questions on Stack Overflow.

To discover what users want, and therefore how to improve Stack Overflow's appeal the survey included a question that asked participants to choose alternative formats for gaining knowledge with this result.

This question was analysed by age finding that 39% of the youngest cohort want Coding challenges and Stack Overflow was quick to respond, launching its Challenges page at the begionning of August. 

The rise of AI Chatbots is seen as a major contributor to Stack Overflow's decline, see Stack Overflow Traffic Slumps As Devs Turn to ChatGPT, but Stack Overflow has now responded with its newly launched, AI Assist. Built in partnership with Google, this is an AI-powered search tool for Stack Overflow's "human-validated" answers. Partnerships with both OpenAI and with Google mean that both ChatGPT and Gemini use Stack Overflow's store of knowledge so it will be interesting to see if the new facility will increase Stack Overflow's traffic.     

More Information 

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025

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