Drupal Developer Survey 2025 Results are Out!
The results from this year's Drupal Developer Survey are in, offering the most comprehensive look yet into the global Drupal development community. Conducted by Ironstar, the 2025 survey captured responses from 753 developers across 58 countries, a notable increase from 648 responses in 2024.
The survey, originally launched in 2018 by Jeff Geerling and Chris Urban and now led by Mike Richardson at Ironstar, aims to chart technology preferences, community sentiment, and emerging trends among those who build with Drupal. Supported by a multilingual team of contributors, the survey continues to prioritize accessibility with translations in 12 languages. This effort was made possible by a group of volunteers who generously contributed their time to make the survey available beyond English.
One of the most significant developments this year is the sharp rise in AI adoption. Seventy-eight percent of Drupal developers now report using AI tools in their workflows, a dramatic leap from 50 percent in 2024. ChatGPT remains the most commonly used and recommended tool, while Claude, Copilot, and Perplexity also earned strong endorsements. Developers expressed lower confidence in Gemini, Grok, and PhpStorm's AI assistant.
On the tooling front, DDEV has solidified its position as the dominant local development environment, with 93 percent of users recommending it. While many developers still have experience managing their own LAMP or WAMP stacks, most no longer endorse that approach. Homebrew came in second with a 72 percent recommendation rate, while Lando trailed at 51 percent.
When it comes to content management systems beyond Drupal, Laravel earned the strongest praise, with 85 percent of users recommending it. Shopify also received high marks. In contrast, Sitecore, AEM, Kentico, and Umbraco were widely panned. WordPress remains heavily used but polarizing, with only 28 percent of its users willing to recommend it.
This year's survey also highlighted key insights around hosting and infrastructure. Pantheon remains the most widely used Drupal Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, but Platform.sh received higher user recommendations. Among Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms, Digital Ocean and Hetzner emerged as the most liked, while Azure lagged with only 29 percent of users willing to recommend it.
On the CDN front, Cloudflare continues to lead, used by a majority of Drupal developers and recommended by 81 percent of them. Fastly followed closely behind, earning a 78 percent recommendation rate. AWS CloudFront and Akamai received lower marks, with CloudFront at 60 percent and Akamai at just 54 percent.
A concerning trend is the community's aging demographic. Only one respondent was under the age of 21. The number of developers aged 21 to 29 fell from 59 in 2024 to just 44 this year, despite a larger overall sample size. This suggests that Drupal continues to face challenges in attracting younger talent, even as tools like Experience Builder and AI integration aim to modernize the platform.
Ironstar also introduced new questions in this year's survey, including salary insights. While 11 percent of respondents chose not to disclose their income, the responses gathered were used to calculate regional averages. The survey team grouped countries by general economic alignment to offer more meaningful comparisons, although they acknowledged the limitations of that approach.
Language continues to be a relevant issue for the global Drupal community. While only 28 percent of respondents speak English as their first language, 90 percent are proficient or native-level English speakers. This raised questions about the need for translation efforts, though Ironstar maintains that localized resources still play a vital role in increasing participation from non-English-speaking regions.
Another notable shift occurred in regional growth. In 2024, nearly half of all new developers came from Asia, with Japan alone accounting for 29 percent. This year, the growth appears to have plateaued. Only one of the 11 developers with less than one year of experience was from Japan. The rest came from the US and Europe.
Despite a dip in positive sentiment toward the Drupal project overall from 80 percent last year to 64 percent in 2025, negative sentiment has not increased. Instead, more respondents are simply unsure about the project's future. According to Ironstar, this change may be due to a refined wording of the sentiment question.
The 2025 survey skipped questions that did not show significant movement compared to previous years, focusing instead on meaningful shifts in adoption, satisfaction, and community dynamics. Ironstar hinted that next year's survey may be replaced with a different format, possibly focusing more deeply on user experience or hosting providers.
The full 2025 results, including all visual data and comparisons to 2024, are now available online. Ironstar encourages feedback and participation in shaping the future of the survey.
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