While developers are using AI tools they are by no means satisfied with them. While LLMs are widely used, fewer than half of developers are making use of AI agents. And Vibe Coding is ruled out by the vast majority. These findings come from the 2025 Stack Overflow Survey, which we are covering with multiple reports.

We've already taken one look at the 2025 Stack Overflow Survey, reporting on its findings regarding the success of Python, Redis and VS Code. In this second bite AI is the focus, a topic that the survey covered from many angles, starting with actual usage:

When it comes to the use of AI Stack Overflow's summary comment is:

84% of respondents are using or planning to use AI tools in their development process, an increase over last year (76%). 

I think that gives the wrong impression and that it is fairer to point out that fewer than half of respondents to this question use AI tools on a daily basis. Also, it is a question answered by only two-thirds of those surveyed - attracting a total of 33,662 responses from the 49,009 responses used in the survey results. 

As we discovered last week, as well as presenting the responses for "All Respondents" Stack Overflow also shows the results for "Professional Developers" and those "Learning to Code" and there can be big differences between these two groups. In this case exactly the same percentage, 68%, of Professionals and Learners use AI tools at least weekly. The difference comes in the proportion who neither use these tools nor plan to do so, a response selected by 19.5% of Learners but only 14.7% of Professionals.

For this question Stack Overflow also presents data comparing three groups of developers "Early Career Devs", "Mid Career Devs" and "Experienced Devs and there's a clear decreasing trend regarding the use of AI tools on at least a weekly basis as a career progresses, going from 73.6% through 69.6% to 64.5%. There's also an increasing trend in not using or planning to use AI tools going from 12.3% through 13.1% to 16.5%.

So what are the AI tools that have developers have used and formed opinions of? The survey asked:

Which LLM models for AI tools have you used for development work in the past year. Select all that apply.

a question which again revealed differences between the "Professional Developers" and "Learning to Code" groups with the report stating:

OpenAI's GPT models top the large language model list with 82% of developers indicating they used them for development work in the past year. Anthropic's Claude Sonnet models are used more by professional developers (45%) than by those learning to code (30%).

This chart is of the 11 LLMs used by at least 10% of the "All Respondents group (16,474):

Gemini Flash is the second most used LLM for Learners with 42.6% while among Professional Developers only 34.4% use it and the biggest difference between these two groups is with Deep Seek Reasoning which is used by 37.6% of Learners compared to only 21.9% of Professional Developers.

Moving on to AI Agents the Stack Overflow conclusion is: 

AI agents are not yet mainstream. A majority of developers (52%) either don't use agents or stick to simpler AI tools, and a significant portion (38%) have no plans to adopt them.

However of the 12,301 respondents who do use AI agents, 83.5% are using them for software development with orchestration products such as Ollama and LangChain while 24.9% are using them for Data and Analytics with Redis and GitHub MCP Server topping the list of AI Agent data storage tools.

Looking into the challenges with AI Agents, Stack Overflow found that 87% of 28,930 respondents were concerned about the  accuracy of information provided by AI agents; 81% were concerns about the security and privacy of data and 53% considered the cost of AI agent platforms a barrier.

Regarding AI tools in general, Stack Overflow found that respondents to successive survey were less and less favorable, reporting:

Positive sentiment for AI tools has decreased in 2025: 70%+ in 2023 and 2024 to just 60% this year. Professionals show a higher overall favorable sentiment (61%) than those learning to code (53%).

In particular, the report reveals:

More developers actively distrust the accuracy of AI tools (46%) than trust it (33%), and only a fraction (3%) report "highly trusting" the output. Experienced developers are the most cautious, with the lowest "highly trust" rate (2.6%) and the highest "highly distrust" rate (20%).

Respondents were also asked:

 Is "vibe coding" part of your professional development work?

This question had 26,564 responses with over three quarters of respondents firmly answering "No".   

More Information 

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025

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