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Stack Overflow Survey: AWS Leads Cloud Providers, Azure and Google Nearly Tied
Amazon Web Services leads cloud platform usage in Stack Overflow's 2026 Developer Survey, while Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are separated by less than a percentage point. The results also show Docker topping the broader cloud development tools category and relatively limited use of artificial intelligence for production operations.
The annual survey, released Oct. 6, includes 30,903 valid responses from 169 countries. Its cloud development question drew 10,889 responses and covered platforms, container tools, package managers, build tools and infrastructure as code.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) registered 41.8%, compared with 25.1% for Azure and 24.5% for Google Cloud. Cloudflare was in the same cluster at 24.6%. These percentages describe respondents reporting extensive development work with each technology over the past year, with multiple selections allowed.
[Click on image for larger view.] Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Usage (source: Stack Overflow).
AWS Leads a Broad Cloud Field
The cloud development results extend well beyond the largest providers. Firebase registered 11.1%, Vercel 10.7%, DigitalOcean 9.6% and Hetzner Cloud 7.8%. Smaller entries included Oracle Cloud Infrastructure at 2.8% and IBM Cloud at 1.3%. The list also captured use of Supabase at 6.9%, Netlify at 5.6% and Heroku at 3.6%, alongside OVHcloud at 3.3%, Fly.io at 3.2% and Render at 3%.
In its technology overview, Stack Overflow noted that "each of these lists includes a long tail of tools in the single digits for usage" even where established products lead the rankings.
AWS's lead over Azure was 16.7 percentage points within this sample. The Azure-Google Cloud difference was much narrower: 2,737 respondents selected Azure, compared with 2,663 for Google Cloud. Cloudflare drew 2,680 selections.
The question combines services and tools with different purposes, rather than ranking only interchangeable cloud providers. It also does not measure spending, deployed capacity or enterprise cloud revenue. A respondent could report using a cloud platform alongside several container, automation and build tools.
Docker Tops the Infrastructure Tool List
Docker and Docker Compose, grouped together in the survey, led the entire cloud development category at 59.1%. Kubernetes registered 26%, while Podman came in at 13%. Other container-related entries included Helm at 12.4%, Rancher at 4.4% and OpenShift at 3.2%.
Infrastructure automation tools also appeared throughout the results. Terraform registered 18.3% and Ansible 12%, followed by OpenTofu at 3.6% and Pulumi at 2%. Those figures represent reported use across the question's respondent group; they do not establish whether an organization standardized on any one tool.
The combined category also includes package managers such as npm and pip, which placed above most cloud platforms. Docker's first-place finish therefore describes the complete tool list, while AWS leads the cloud providers within that list. Neither ranking identifies where respondents actually host their container workloads.
Smaller Tools Draw Continued Interest
Stack Overflow's separate desired and admired results distinguish tools respondents want to use from those existing users want to continue using. Docker led desired usage at 38.4%, followed by AWS at 24.1%. Kubernetes registered 21.6%.
Google Cloud slightly exceeded Azure on desired usage, at 13.9% versus 13.7%, reversing their order in the past-year usage results. Cloudflare's desired figure was higher than either at 16.7%.
Some smaller platforms and tools scored higher on continued interest than their more widely used counterparts. Hetzner Cloud had an admired score of 63.6%, compared with 45.8% for AWS, 43.2% for Azure and 42.6% for Google Cloud.
Similarly, OpenTofu's admired score was 61.1%, compared with Terraform's 45.7%. Podman scored 54.9%, while Kubernetes scored 53.5% and Docker 58.9%. These percentages concern each technology's existing users, so higher scores do not mean a tool has more users overall.
[Click on image for larger view.] Desired and Admired Cloud Technologies (source: Stack Overflow).
AI Adoption Is Lower in Production Operations
The survey's AI workflow findings provide an additional operations angle, although they cover production systems generally rather than cloud deployments specifically. Reported AI use for deploying, operating or troubleshooting production systems stood at 19.9%.
That compared with 41.9% for analyzing data, logs, metrics or query results and 28.1% for creating or configuring development and test environments. For production operations, 36% selected not using AI and not planning to, while 22% indicated that the activity was outside their workflow.
As Ryan Donovan put it in Stack Overflow's announcement post: "AI gets to muck about with familiar code, but once that code reaches prod server, it gets shown the door."
[Click on image for larger view.] AI Adoption Across Operational Workflows (source: Stack Overflow).
The findings describe different tasks rather than a single measure of enterprise AI adoption. They also do not distinguish AI assistance from fully autonomous operation of production infrastructure.
According to the survey methodology, responses were collected June 23 through Aug. 5, with participation promoted through Stack Overflow's website, blog and community email list. The cloud and AI sections have different respondent groups, and their results should not be treated as a survey solely of cloud administrators.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.