# C# Popularity, Usage, and Developer Momentum in 2026 > How is C# being used in 2025? Explore the latest C# statistics, usage trends, and development updates. Source: https://www.zenrows.com/blog/c-sharp-popularity Forza Horizon 5, Alaska Airlines, UPS, and Stack Overflow, some of the world’s most recognized names, trust C\# to power their critical systems. This isn’t just nostalgia. In 2025, C\#, Microsoft’s object-oriented powerhouse, is still going strong, regularly crowned as one of the most loved languages across surveys. But just how popular is C\# compared to other languages in today’s development ecosystem? How many developers still prefer it? Let’s see what the data says about C\# popularity. ## Developer Preference and Adoption Show That C\# Is a Consistent Leader Initially designed by Microsoft in the 2000s for Windows-centric applications, C\# now consistently ranks among the top programming languages developers prefer. ![tiobe index for c#](https://static.zenrows.com/content/tiobe_index_for_c_1862a5faee.png) As per the [TIOBE Index](https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/) for May 2025, C# is the fifth most popular programming language, with a rating of 4.22%. > **Skip the blocks.** [Try Zenrows free](/) and get clean web data without the anti-bot fight. While this is a slight dip compared to the previous year, it still shows substantial interest and a solid footing in the developer community. ![Graph showing most popular programming languages](https://static.zenrows.com/content/most_popular_programming_languages_b55862f42a.png) On the other hand, the [Stack Overflow Developer Survey](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023) showed C\# being used by 27.1% of all respondents, placing it as the 8th most commonly used language. For professional developers, the usage was slightly higher at 28.8% in the 2024 survey iteration. ![Graph showing most popular frameworks and libraries](https://static.zenrows.com/content/most_popular_frameworks_and_libraries_f19ee89850.png) Notably, .NET (5+) was ranked as the most used "Other framework and library" in the same survey. ![Graph showing number of software developers by programming language](https://static.zenrows.com/content/number_of_software_developers_by_programming_language_81473d9f6c.png) Moreover, JetBrains' [State of Developer Ecosystem 2023](https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2023/) indicated that C# was the primary language for approximately 3.05 million developers. ## What's New In C#? What we use as C# today is the result of 15+ years of continued innovation. [C# version 13](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/whats-new/csharp-13), released late in 2024, continues that trend by bringing enhancements across the board. Highlights include: * **Improved params collections**: You can now use the params keyword with `System.Span`, `System.ReadOnlySpan`, and collections implementing `System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`. * **Better support for ReadOnlySpan:** C# 13 allows collection expressions to work directly with `ReadOnlySpan`, a high-performance struct that avoids allocations. * **Modern thread synchronization with lock:** C# now supports the `System.Threading.Lock`, which is better compared to the `System.Threading.Monitor` approach. * **Auto properties with custom logic**: It’s now easier to declare properties without explicit backing fields. Custom logic can now be included directly within the getters and setters of auto-properties Where are all these features being used, though? Mostly in application development. ## C# Is Thriving in Application Development C# pairs concise, expressive syntax with the rich .NET ecosystem: powerful libraries, modern tooling, and cross-platform support power reliable, high-performance applications. ### Enterprise, Web, and Cloud-Native Development C# remains a mainstay for large-scale business systems and high-throughput web services. ![Graph showing Percentage of websites using server side programming language](https://static.zenrows.com/content/Percentage_of_websites_using_server_side_programming_language_485eaa91cf.png) ASP.NET (the core web framework for C#) powers about [5.1% of all websites](https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-aspnet?utm_source=chatgpt.com) with a known server-side language. Deep Azure integration continues to give C# developers a fast path to scalable cloud services. In 2024, [28% of professional developers](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology?utm_source=chatgpt.com) said they’ve done extensive work on Azure over the past year, up from 26% in 2023\. This mirrors the growing adoption of Functions, App Service, and Kubernetes offerings. ### Game Development Unity’s choice of C# for scripting keeps the language at the heart of modern game creation. Unity’s own data shows that around [70% of all mobile games](https://unity.com/solutions/mobile) worldwide run on their engine, and roughly 30% of the top 1,000 PC titles also rely on it. C# expertise is in constant demand for gameplay logic, tools development and real-time simulations. ### Desktop Applications Even as web and mobile apps grow, C# retains a strong foothold on the desktop. Frameworks like [Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/overview/)) and [Windows Forms](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/overview/) power countless internal tools and customer-facing Windows applications. They offer mature UI libraries, data binding, and tight OS integration that enterprises still depend on for rich client experiences. ### Cross-Platform Development With [.NET MAUI](https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/maui) (Multi-platform App UI) and [Blazor](https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor), you can now use C# to build native mobile (iOS, Android), desktop (Windows, macOS), and even browser-hosted (WebAssembly) UIs from a single codebase. .NET MAUI has been production-ready since .NET 6 and is seeing steady uptake among organizations consolidating their mobile and desktop efforts. [Blazor WebAssembly](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/blazor/?view=aspnetcore-9.0), meanwhile, lets you write interactive web front-ends entirely in C\# and shares libraries and business logic with server-side components. ## The Developers Behind C# ![Graph showing usage of ides among developers](https://static.zenrows.com/content/usage_of_ides_among_developers_bedccb5c76.png) Seasoned C# engineers value its mature tooling: Visual Studio Code (used by 73.6% of developers) and Visual Studio (30.6%) topped the [2024 Stack Overflow survey](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/), mostly because they deliver everything from [advanced debugging to Azure integration](https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2024/07/26/so-dev-survey.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com). In the U.S., the median C\# developer base salary is [about $117,563 per year](https://www.talent.com/salary?job=C%23+developer&location=&utm_source=chatgpt.com), with entry-level roles starting near $96,547 and senior engineers earning up to $155,920 annually. Globally, remote C# positions [average $70,966 per year](https://arc.dev/salaries/c_sharp-developers?utm_source=chatgpt.com), and seasoned remote specialists report salaries around $86,315 Most professional web developers favor ASP .NET for their sites and RESTful services. [5.9% of survey respondents](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology?utm_source=chatgpt.com) list Unity (with C\# scripting at its core) among their primary tools. [3.1% use .NET MAUI](https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2024/07/26/so-dev-survey.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com) to target iOS, Android, Windows and macOS from one C\# codebase. ## C# and AI C\# is quickly gaining traction in AI application development. Microsoft’s ML.NET framework has seen over [9.7 million total downloads](https://www.nuget.org/profiles/mlnet?utm_source=chatgpt.com), with core packages like `c` and `Microsoft.ML.ImageAnalytics` each exceeding 3 million downloads. On the deployment side, the [official OpenAI .NET library](https://github.com/openai/openai-dotnet) (2,000+ GitHub stars) plus community SDKs like [Betalgo’s wrapper](https://github.com/betalgo/LCE-Android-SDK) simplify calling GPT-4, DALL·E, and other large-language or vision models directly from C# applications. Meanwhile, [Azure’s Cognitive Services](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/ai-services) and Azure OpenAI integrations let you wire up text analysis, vision, and speech capabilities with a few lines of C\# and configuration. ## Web Scraping with C# Lightweight [web scraping with C#](/blog/web-scraping-c-sharp) is easy when you combine its built-in HTTP libraries with mature HTML parsers * **HTTP requests**: `HttpClient` provides async, high-performance calls to fetch pages or APIs with just a few lines of C#. * **HTML parsing**: `HtmlAgilityPack` has over [225 million NuGet downloads](https://html-agility-pack.net/download?utm_source=chatgpt.com) and excels at handling malformed or real-world HTML. [AngleSharp](https://github.com/AngleSharp/AngleSharp/releases?utm_source=chatgpt.com) implements the W3C DOM and CSS standards for precise querying. * **Browser automation**: For JavaScript-heavy sites, the [Selenium.WebDriver](https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/) .NET bindings let you control real browsers and scrape dynamic content. This toolkit is enough for C\# devs to build dependable scrapers that scale from simple data pulls to even authenticated workflows. ## The Road Ahead for C# Is Bright C# continues to grow in lockstep with the broader .NET platform, and the .[NET 9 release](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/whats-new/dotnet-9/overview) reinforces that direction. It has over 1,000 performance improvements, adaptive Server-GC, and Arm64 vectorization. This means C# applications will run faster and more efficiently, especially in cloud-native and microservices environments. Looking ahead at the language itself, the latest C# enriches your toolset with * Raw string literals for cleaner multi-line text and embedded JSON or XML without escapes * Primary constructors on regular classes to declare and assign properties in one line * List patterns for declarative matching of sequences and arrays * Generic math support to write numeric algorithms once, for all number types. It’s pretty obvious that C# remains primed for whatever development trend comes next. ## FAQ ### Is C# becoming more popular? C# ranked among the top 10 most-used languages in the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, with growing usage in cloud, enterprise, and AI applications. ### What is C# coding used for? C# is used to build web apps, APIs, desktop software, games (via Unity), mobile apps (.NET MAUI), cloud services (Azure), and even AI-powered tools with ML.NET and Azure AI. ### Is C# different from C++? Yes. C# is a managed, high-level language designed for the .NET platform with memory safety and modern tooling. C++, on the other hand, is lower-level, giving more control over memory and performance but with more complexity.