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Stack Overflow 2026 Survey: VS Code Leads, Visual Studio Takes Third
Visual Studio Code remains the most widely used development environment in Stack Overflow's 2026 Developer Survey, with Visual Studio placing third, narrowly behind Notepad++. The Microsoft tools appear alongside a different leader in artificial intelligence coding assistants: Claude Code, ahead of GitHub Copilot.
Stack Overflow released the results Oct. 6, covering 30,903 valid responses from 169 countries. Its technology rankings put VS Code at 70.9% among respondents to the development-environment question, compared with 27.8% for Notepad++ and 27.6% for Visual Studio.
The findings cover tools used over the past year, with respondents able to select multiple products. They measure reported usage within each question's respondent group, rather than exclusive product choices or market share across all developers.
VS Code Keeps a Wide Lead
The editor results, based on 13,193 responses, show a substantial gap between VS Code and every other entry. Vim followed Visual Studio at 27.2%, with IntelliJ IDEA at 24.3%. Cursor placed sixth at 14.9%, while Zed registered 11.4% and Windsurf 3.2%.
[Click on image for larger view.] Dev IDEs (source: Stack Overflow).
Visual Studio's third-place finish came down to a small numerical difference: 3,643 respondents selected it, compared with 3,673 for Notepad++. Other tools of interest to Microsoft developers included Rider at 7% and GitHub Codespaces at 6.6%.
Stack Overflow's accompanying analysis described VS Code as "still the most used IDE despite AI disruptors." The survey's integrated development environment category includes both full development environments and code editors.
Usage and continued interest tell somewhat different stories. In the separate desired and admired results, VS Code led desired usage at 40.6%. Visual Studio registered 14.1%, behind Vim, Notepad++ and IntelliJ IDEA.
[Click on image for larger view.] Admired/Desired Dev IDEs (source: Stack Overflow).
The admired measure captures whether existing users also want to keep using a tool. VS Code scored 55.7%, while Visual Studio scored 47.8%. Rider, despite its smaller usage footprint, scored 56.9%; Cursor scored 33%. These measures distinguish broad adoption from the interest expressed by people who have already used a product.
Copilot Follows Claude Code
GitHub Copilot was the second-most-used entry in the coding agents and assistants results, selected by 58.7% of that question's 12,255 respondents. Claude Code led at 65.5%, followed by Copilot, OpenAI Codex at 29.5% and Cursor at 25.5%.
[Click on image for larger view.] AI Coding Agents (source: Stack Overflow).
That question asked which coding agents or assistants respondents had used in the past year. It is distinct from the editor question, which asked about regular development-environment use. Cursor's different percentages therefore come from different questions and respondent groups.
The broader AI results show coding assistants and agents becoming routine for their users: 73% used them daily. But trust remained conditional. Among 14,304 respondents to the trust question, 48% trusted AI when they could easily verify its output, while 6.6% trusted it for many tasks including important work decisions.
Verification also showed up in reported behavior. Among those answering how they handled AI-generated development answers, 76.5% ran them locally, 63.9% compared them with their codebase and 53% inspected tests or security implications. Only 9.6% selected using answers as-is.
ASP.NET Core Places Fourth
For the .NET camp, ASP.NET Core ranked fourth in web framework and technology usage at 19.9%, behind Node.js, React and Next.js. ASP.NET registered 13.9%, while Blazor came in at 6.7%, among 10,281 respondents.
The full technology tables also show ASP.NET Core placing third in desired web technology usage at 13.8%, behind React and Node.js. Its admired score was 58%, compared with 47.4% for Blazor and 31.7% for ASP.NET.
[Click on image for larger view.] Web Frameworks (source: Stack Overflow).
Among languages, TypeScript ranked sixth at 43.8%, C# eighth at 27.1% and PowerShell ninth at 24.6%. Microsoft SQL Server placed fifth among databases at 27.1%. In the combined cloud development and infrastructure tools category, Azure registered 25.1%, compared with 41.8% for Amazon Web Services and 24.5% for Google Cloud.
Reading the Results
The methodology reports responses collected June 23 through Aug. 5. Stack Overflow promoted participation through its website, blog and opted-in community email list.
In its launch announcement, Stack Overflow said it planned to make the full respondent dataset available in a few weeks. The published site already provides question-level tables, respondent counts and downloadable chart options for examining the findings.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.