'Most Loved' AWS Enjoys Huge Lead Over Rival Clouds in Developer Survey -- Virtualization Review

'Most Loved' AWS Enjoys Huge Lead Over Rival Clouds in Developer Survey

By David Ramel
08/09/2021

As in many other surveys, Amazon Web Services (AWS) enjoys a huge lead over rival platforms among developers in the Stack Overflow 2021 Developer Survey.

This is one of the largest and most prominent survey reports in the software development space, as Stack Overflow -- known for its super-popular development Q&A site -- garnered responses from more than 80,000 developers around the world, who provided their views on tools and trends.

SO has been conducting the survey for years, but 2021 is the first year it broke out cloud platforms from a general platforms question.

"AWS maintains its lead as the most widely used cloud platform, but Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure made substantial gains from last year," the 2021 SO survey report states.

AWS was the choice of 54.22 percent of all respondents when they were asked: "Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)"

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Cloud Platforms by Percentage of Responses *(source: Stack Overflow).*

When broken down by the number of responses as opposed to percentage of responses, the numbers were AWS (29,138), GCP (16,687) and Microsoft Azure (16,540):

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Cloud Platforms by Number of Responses *(source: Stack Overflow).*

Among professional developers only, the percentage of respondents choosing AWS was even larger:

When broken out by the number of responses, it's clear that AWS almost doubled the total of GCP:

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Cloud Platforms by Number of Responses Among Professional Developers *(source: Stack Overflow).*

Here are the percentage responses among all respondents and among just professional developers from last year's survey for all platforms -- when clouds weren't separated -- showing AWS again led cloud platforms and came in fourth overall:

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Cloud (and other) Platforms in 2020 Survey, All Respondents *(source: Stack Overflow).*

SO is also known for asking about "most loved" and "dreaded" tools and technologies, and the 2021 report shows AWS again No. 1 on the "most loved" platform list, though the order changes a bit because GCP garnered a little more love than Azure:

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Loved vs. Dreaded Platforms *(source: Stack Overflow).*

Respondents were also asked about which platform they "want" in the question asking about "% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it." Here, again, AWS has a big lead, though GCP does again edge out Azure for No. 2:

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Most Wanted Platforms *(source: Stack Overflow).*

More information about other aspects of the SO report can be found in this article published in our sister publication Visual Studio Magazine.

Coincidentally, Gartner just published its annual Magic Quadrant report on cloud computing platforms, finding the "Big 3" by themselves in the "Leaders" category. To see what Gartner cautioned enterprises about in making their cloud computing vendor choices, see the Aug. 4 article "What Are Gartner's 'Cautions' About Big 3 Cloud Providers?."

Other such reports covered by Virtualization & Cloud Review often find Azure chasing AWS, but it hasn't caught up in very many areas: