Dev Survey on Cloud Usage: AWS Rules, Except for One Group -- Virtualization Review

Dev Survey on Cloud Usage: AWS Rules, Except for One Group

By David Ramel
07/26/2024

Stack Overflow is out with its massive annual survey that investigates all things developer-related, and this year's edition shows Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the most popular cloud platform among developers -- except for those learning to code.

Published this week, the 2024 Developer Survey from the company known for its popular software development Q&A site reveals a familiar story among cloud usage studies: AWS leads while Microsoft and Google Cloud slowly claw away at Amazon's lead, established when the company invented "the cloud." In this case, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud did make gains, but not at the expense of AWS.

"AWS' share of usage amongst respondents is the same in 2024 as in 2023, while Azure and Google Cloud increased their share," the report said. "Azure has climbed from 26 percent to 28 percent usage and Google Cloud went from 24 percent to 25 percent."

That's usually the pattern, with Microsoft Azure sometimes even beating AWS in some surveys in specific, specialized categories, but rarely.

In this case, Google Cloud beats AWS in one specific, specialized category, those "Learning to Code," one of the categories along with "Professional Developers" and "Other Coders."

AWS leads among "All Respondents" and every other category except "Learning to Code." Otherwise, the only change in the familiar AWS->Azure->GCP pattern is that Google Cloud has now surpassed Azure for second place beneath AWS in the "Other Coders" category.

Here are all four charts showing results to the question: "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 -- All Respondents *(source: Stack Overflow).*

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Cloud Platforms -- Professional Developers *(source: Stack Overflow).*

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Cloud Platforms -- Learning to Code *(source: Stack Overflow).*

**[Click on image for larger view.]** Cloud Platforms -- Other Coders *(source: Stack Overflow).*

Want to Work With
While those charts show what clouds devs actually work with, the cloud question also asks what they want to work with in the future.

"22 percent of Microsoft Azure users and 24 percent of AWS users would like to use Google Cloud next year," SO said. "Google Cloud users would like to use tools that are lesser known next year, such as Supabase, Vercel, and Cloudflare."

Here's the chart for All Respondents, which is most useful when you can go to the live site and hover over the "want to work with" paths to get pop-up info, but at least gives you a general idea of the major players:

Most Admired/Desired
The sprawling survey also investigated "most-admired" cloud platforms, and here it's a whole different story.

"Hetzner is the most-admired cloud platform for the second year in a row with a 75 percent admire score, rising from their 70 percent score last year," SO said. Cloudflare came in second here, also ahead of the "Big 3" cloud giants. A few others did edge out Azure and Google Cloud.

However, when devs responded to the "desire" part of that question, the order again reverted to the familiar cloud giant pattern: