GitHub Statistics 2026: Top Languages, Most-Starred Repositories and AI
We analysed nearly half a million of GitHub's most popular repositories: the 480,428 public repositories with 100 or more stars. Python is the language of 19.8% of them. The fastest climber is TypeScript, the language of 1.2% of the popular repositories started in 2012 and 18.6% of those started in 2026. Almost a quarter of this year's popular repositories are about AI, and the most common topic among them is claude-code.
- Python is the most common language on GitHub's popular repositories, the primary language of 19.8% of the 480,428 public repositories with 100 or more stars. JavaScript follows at 11.8% and TypeScript at 7.6%.
- TypeScript is the language of 18.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026, up from 1.2% of those started in 2012. Java fell from 7.9% to 1.0% over the same years. GitHub's own Octoverse 2025 report shows the same shift: in August 2025 TypeScript overtook Python and JavaScript as the language with the most monthly contributors on GitHub.
- 23.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026 carry an AI topic, 6,046 of them, up from 1.9% of those started in 2016.
- The most common topic on popular repositories started in 2026 is claude-code, on 2,025 of them, ahead of ai-agents on 1,675 and llm on 1,510.
- 26.8% of GitHub's popular repositories have no license GitHub can detect, 128,584 of them. MIT covers 35.8% and Apache 2.0 covers 12.4%.
- 38.5% of GitHub's popular repositories have not been pushed to in three years, 185,154 of them. 19.1% were pushed to in the last 30 days.
- The top 1% of GitHub's popular repositories hold 33.0% of all their stars, and the top 10% hold 67.6%. 127 repositories have 100,000 stars or more.
- Microsoft's organisation account owns more popular repositories than any other account on GitHub, 1,905 of them holding 4.1 million stars. Google's is second with 1,043.
- 89.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026 use main as their default branch, against 10.9% of those started in 2018.
- Individual developers own 66.4% of GitHub's popular repositories and organisations own 33.6%. Among the popular repositories started in 2026 the organisation share is 25.5%, the lowest of any year since 2010.
- For every popular repository its owner has archived, 3.9 more have gone three years without a push and were never archived: 157,829 quiet repositories against 40,587 archived ones.
Python leads GitHub with 19.8% of popular repositories
| Language | Repositories | Share |
|---|---|---|
 Python | 95,056 | 19.8% |
 JavaScript | 56,674 | 11.8% |
 TypeScript | 36,669 | 7.6% |
 Java | 26,584 | 5.5% |
 C++ | 25,615 | 5.3% |
 Go | 21,581 | 4.5% |
 C | 18,605 | 3.9% |
 C# | 15,576 | 3.2% |
 Rust | 13,796 | 2.9% |
 HTML | 12,361 | 2.6% |
| Other languages | 119,992 | 25.0% |
| No detected language | 37,919 | 7.9% |
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Python is the primary language of 95,056 of GitHub's 480,428 public repositories with 100 or more stars, 19.8% of them. JavaScript is second at 11.8% and TypeScript third at 7.6%, and the three together account for nearly two popular repositories in five. Counted by people rather than repositories, TypeScript is already first: GitHub's Octoverse 2025 report found it passed Python and JavaScript in August 2025 as the language with the most monthly contributors, and credits AI-assisted coding, since type checks catch the mistakes AI tools make before they ship.
Behind them the field spreads out fast. Java and C++ each hold a little over 5%, Go 4.5%, C 3.9%, C# 3.2% and Rust 2.9%. GitHub detects 490 distinct primary languages across the set, and 7.9% of popular repositories have none at all, mostly lists, books and documentation that hold no code.
| Language | Repositories | Share of popular repositories |
|---|---|---|
| Python | 95,056 | 19.8% |
| JavaScript | 56,674 | 11.8% |
| TypeScript | 36,669 | 7.6% |
| Java | 26,584 | 5.5% |
| C++ | 25,615 | 5.3% |
| Go | 21,581 | 4.5% |
| C | 18,605 | 3.9% |
| C# | 15,576 | 3.2% |
| Rust | 13,796 | 2.9% |
| HTML | 12,361 | 2.6% |
 Shell | 12,325 | 2.6% |
 PHP | 11,986 | 2.5% |
 Jupyter Notebook | 11,510 | 2.4% |
 Swift | 8,552 | 1.8% |
 Ruby | 7,655 | 1.6% |
 Kotlin | 6,863 | 1.4% |
 Objective-C | 6,737 | 1.4% |
 CSS | 4,900 | 1.0% |
 Vue | 3,969 | 0.8% |
 Dart | 3,829 | 0.8% |
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9.6% of popular repositories, 46,079 of them, describe themselves in Chinese. Japanese, Korean and Cyrillic descriptions together cover under 1%, which leaves Chinese as the only script besides the Latin alphabet with a real presence among popular repositories.
Python's lead is a lead in volume. It is the default language of data science and machine learning, and those fields publish a great deal of code that collects a few hundred stars and stops.
Swift and Go repositories collect the most stars
| Language | Median stars | Repositories | Forks per star |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swift | 271 | 8,552 | 0.1 |
| Go | 270 | 21,581 | 0.1 |
| TypeScript | 259 | 36,669 | 0.1 |
| Rust | 259 | 13,796 | 0.1 |
| Objective-C | 251 | 6,737 | 0.2 |
| Kotlin | 250 | 6,863 | 0.1 |
| Java | 242 | 26,584 | 0.3 |
| C | 236 | 18,605 | 0.2 |
| Ruby | 236 | 7,655 | 0.2 |
| JavaScript | 232 | 56,674 | 0.2 |
| C++ | 231 | 25,615 | 0.2 |
| PHP | 229 | 11,986 | 0.2 |
| Shell | 227 | 12,325 | 0.2 |
| Python | 225 | 95,056 | 0.2 |
| C# | 225 | 15,576 | 0.2 |
| HTML | 214 | 12,361 | 0.3 |
| Jupyter Notebook | 213 | 11,510 | 0.3 |
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The middle popular Swift repository has 271 stars and the middle Go repository 270, the highest of any language with 5,000 or more popular repositories. Python's middle repository has 225, near the bottom of the table.
Every language here starts at the same floor of 100 stars, so a median above 250 means a language's popular projects tend to keep climbing once they are found. Swift and Go are the languages of iOS apps and cloud tooling, where one project tends to serve a large audience. Python's long tail of research code keeps its median low even though it holds 19.2% of every star in the set.
The language with the most projects is not the language whose projects travel furthest, and the gap between them is mostly research code.
TypeScript went from 1.2% to 18.6% of new popular repositories
| Year started | Python | JavaScript | TypeScript | Java | C++ | Go | C | Ruby | Rust | PHP | Other languages | No detected language |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 7.1% | 9.6% | 0.2% | 3.2% | 3.0% | 0.0% | 6.2% | 49.3% | 0.1% | 2.2% | 17.3% | 1.9% |
| 2009 | 14.0% | 11.1% | 0.2% | 6.1% | 4.3% | 0.7% | 6.9% | 25.1% | 0.0% | 5.7% | 24.0% | 1.7% |
| 2010 | 12.4% | 18.2% | 0.7% | 7.1% | 5.4% | 0.7% | 8.0% | 12.8% | 0.0% | 6.7% | 25.9% | 2.1% |
| 2011 | 12.5% | 19.8% | 0.9% | 7.8% | 5.7% | 1.0% | 6.8% | 9.3% | 0.2% | 7.1% | 26.3% | 2.5% |
| 2012 | 12.5% | 20.7% | 1.2% | 7.9% | 5.8% | 2.1% | 6.9% | 6.5% | 0.2% | 6.3% | 26.8% | 3.1% |
| 2013 | 11.3% | 20.4% | 1.4% | 8.4% | 6.4% | 3.4% | 5.9% | 4.4% | 0.4% | 5.6% | 28.6% | 3.8% |
| 2014 | 11.2% | 19.0% | 1.7% | 9.2% | 6.2% | 4.6% | 5.4% | 2.8% | 0.9% | 4.7% | 29.1% | 5.2% |
| 2015 | 11.2% | 17.5% | 2.9% | 10.1% | 6.4% | 4.5% | 5.2% | 1.7% | 1.4% | 3.9% | 29.3% | 5.9% |
| 2016 | 12.9% | 16.7% | 4.4% | 10.3% | 5.8% | 4.7% | 4.0% | 1.2% | 1.5% | 3.2% | 28.7% | 6.7% |
| 2017 | 16.5% | 15.1% | 5.3% | 8.2% | 5.7% | 4.9% | 3.8% | 0.8% | 1.6% | 2.6% | 28.5% | 7.0% |
| 2018 | 19.1% | 12.4% | 6.0% | 6.2% | 5.8% | 5.3% | 3.6% | 0.6% | 2.1% | 2.3% | 28.6% | 8.1% |
| 2019 | 20.5% | 10.2% | 7.0% | 5.0% | 5.7% | 5.2% | 3.4% | 0.6% | 2.8% | 2.0% | 28.8% | 8.8% |
| 2020 | 20.6% | 9.0% | 8.5% | 3.9% | 5.6% | 5.2% | 3.5% | 0.5% | 3.4% | 1.8% | 28.8% | 9.3% |
| 2021 | 21.1% | 7.8% | 9.7% | 3.2% | 5.5% | 5.1% | 3.7% | 0.4% | 4.0% | 1.4% | 28.2% | 10.0% |
| 2022 | 21.7% | 6.3% | 10.8% | 2.9% | 5.4% | 5.1% | 3.4% | 0.3% | 5.1% | 1.3% | 26.8% | 10.7% |
| 2023 | 28.2% | 5.6% | 11.5% | 2.3% | 4.7% | 4.0% | 2.9% | 0.3% | 4.6% | 1.1% | 24.6% | 10.3% |
| 2024 | 30.8% | 5.2% | 12.2% | 2.1% | 4.5% | 3.8% | 2.6% | 0.3% | 4.7% | 0.9% | 23.0% | 9.9% |
| 2025 | 32.5% | 6.4% | 15.8% | 1.6% | 3.5% | 4.5% | 2.3% | 0.3% | 4.7% | 0.8% | 18.7% | 8.7% |
| 2026 | 29.3% | 8.1% | 18.6% | 1.0% | 2.6% | 4.4% | 1.9% | 0.1% | 6.2% | 0.3% | 17.8% | 9.6% |
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TypeScript is the language of 18.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026, against 8.5% of those started in 2020 and 1.2% of those started in 2012. No other language has climbed as far. Rust went from 0.2% to 6.2% over the same years, and Python from 12.5% to 29.3%, after peaking at 32.5% in 2025.
The languages that lost share did so steadily. JavaScript was 20.7% of the 2012 cohort and 8.1% of 2026's, with most of that share moving to TypeScript. Java fell from 7.9% to 1.0%, Ruby from 6.5% to 0.1% and PHP from 6.3% to 0.3%.
| Year started | Repositories | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 1,065 | Ruby49.3% | JavaScript9.6% | Python7.1% | C6.2% | Java3.2% |
| 2009 | 2,523 | Ruby25.1% | Python14.0% | JavaScript11.1% | C6.9% | Java6.1% |
| 2010 | 4,926 | JavaScript18.2% | Ruby12.8% | Python12.4% | C8.0% | Java7.1% |
| 2011 | 9,158 | JavaScript19.8% | Python12.5% | Ruby9.3% | Java7.8% | PHP7.1% |
| 2012 | 13,966 | JavaScript20.7% | Python12.5% | Java7.9% | C6.9% | Ruby6.5% |
| 2013 | 19,767 | JavaScript20.4% | Python11.3% | Java8.4% | C++6.4% | C5.9% |
| 2014 | 24,898 | JavaScript19.0% | Python11.2% | Java9.2% | C++6.2% | C5.4% |
| 2015 | 32,281 | JavaScript17.5% | Python11.2% | Java10.1% | C++6.4% | C5.2% |
| 2016 | 36,160 | JavaScript16.7% | Python12.9% | Java10.3% | C++5.8% | Go4.7% |
| 2017 | 39,980 | Python16.5% | JavaScript15.1% | Java8.2% | C++5.7% | TypeScript5.3% |
| 2018 | 39,979 | Python19.1% | JavaScript12.4% | Java6.2% | TypeScript6.0% | C++5.8% |
| 2019 | 39,928 | Python20.5% | JavaScript10.2% | TypeScript7.0% | C++5.7% | Go5.2% |
| 2020 | 41,269 | Python20.6% | JavaScript9.0% | TypeScript8.5% | C++5.6% | Go5.2% |
| 2021 | 33,746 | Python21.1% | TypeScript9.7% | JavaScript7.8% | C++5.5% | Go5.1% |
| 2022 | 30,481 | Python21.7% | TypeScript10.8% | JavaScript6.3% | C++5.4% | Go5.1% |
| 2023 | 32,184 | Python28.2% | TypeScript11.5% | JavaScript5.6% | C++4.7% | Rust4.6% |
| 2024 | 26,507 | Python30.8% | TypeScript12.2% | JavaScript5.2% | Rust4.7% | C++4.5% |
| 2025 | 25,942 | Python32.5% | TypeScript15.8% | JavaScript6.4% | Rust4.7% | Go4.5% |
| 2026 | 25,667 | Python29.3% | TypeScript18.6% | JavaScript8.1% | Rust6.2% | Go4.4% |
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Each era had its own leader. 49.3% of the popular repositories started in 2008 were written in Ruby, when Ruby on Rails was the default choice for a new web startup. JavaScript led every year from 2010 to 2016, Python has led every year since 2017, TypeScript has been second every year since 2021, and Rust has held a place in the top five since 2023.
TypeScript's jump in 2026 rides on AI tooling. It is the language of 24.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026 that carry an AI topic, against 16.7% of the rest, and Python or TypeScript together account for 56.9% of that year's AI repositories. Ruby and PHP still run a large share of the web, and almost nobody is starting a popular new open source project in either.
Almost a quarter of 2026's popular repositories are about AI
23.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026 carry at least one AI topic, 6,046 of them. The share sat at about 4% every year from 2017 to 2021, doubled to 11.7% in 2023, the first full year after ChatGPT, and reached 16.2% in 2025.
| Topic | Repositories started in 2026 | Share of them |
|---|---|---|
| claude-code | 2,025 | 7.9% |
| ai-agents | 1,675 | 6.5% |
| ai | 1,524 | 5.9% |
| llm | 1,510 | 5.9% |
| codex | 1,186 | 4.6% |
| mcp | 1,184 | 4.6% |
| claude | 1,001 | 3.9% |
| developer-tools | 943 | 3.7% |
| typescript | 938 | 3.7% |
| python | 915 | 3.6% |
| cli | 888 | 3.5% |
| ai-agent | 877 | 3.4% |
| rust | 823 | 3.2% |
| open-source | 739 | 2.9% |
| agent-skills | 668 | 2.6% |
| agent | 667 | 2.6% |
| macos | 660 | 2.6% |
| self-hosted | 629 | 2.5% |
| react | 539 | 2.1% |
| skills | 536 | 2.1% |
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The most common topic among 2026's popular repositories is claude-code, on 2,025 of them, ahead of ai-agents on 1,675, ai on 1,524 and llm on 1,510. OpenAI's Codex appears on 1,186, the Model Context Protocol on 1,184 and Claude on 1,001. Python, the most common topic across all years, sits below every one of them in 2026.
Topics are set by each repository's owner and 50.2% of popular repositories have none, so every AI share here is a floor. The direction is clear all the same. A topic that did not exist two years ago now leads the year, and a growing share of new popular repositories are tools built for coding agents.
2026 has already produced almost as many popular repositories as all of 2025
| Year started | Repositories with 100+ stars |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 1,065 |
| 2009 | 2,523 |
| 2010 | 4,926 |
| 2011 | 9,158 |
| 2012 | 13,966 |
| 2013 | 19,767 |
| 2014 | 24,898 |
| 2015 | 32,281 |
| 2016 | 36,160 |
| 2017 | 39,980 |
| 2018 | 39,979 |
| 2019 | 39,928 |
| 2020 | 41,269 |
| 2021 | 33,746 |
| 2022 | 30,481 |
| 2023 | 32,184 |
| 2024 | 26,507 |
| 2025 | 25,942 |
| 2026 | 25,667 |
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As of September 2026, 25,667 repositories started this year already have 100 or more stars, 98.9% of the 25,942 started in the whole of 2025. The peak is still 2020, with 41,269.
Older years look bigger in this chart partly because their repositories have had longer to reach 100 stars. A repository started in 2020 has had six years to collect them and one started this spring has had a few months, which makes this year's count a floor rather than a final figure.
Every effect in this chart works against 2026, which has had the least time of any year, and it has still nearly matched the whole of 2025. New popular projects are arriving faster this year than last.
MIT covers 35.8% of popular repositories, and 26.8% have no license
| License | Repositories | Share |
|---|---|---|
| MIT | 171,848 | 35.8% |
| Apache-2.0 | 59,465 | 12.4% |
| GPL-3.0 | 31,152 | 6.5% |
| Other licenses | 46,594 | 9.7% |
| Unrecognised license file | 42,785 | 8.9% |
| No license | 128,584 | 26.8% |
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35.8% of GitHub's popular repositories carry the MIT License, 171,848 of them. Apache 2.0 covers 12.4% and GPL 3.0 6.5%. The copyleft family together, every GPL, AGPL and LGPL version, covers 10.2%.
26.8% have no license GitHub can detect, 128,584 repositories. Under GitHub's own licensing guidance that leaves the code under default copyright: anyone may look at it and fork it on GitHub, and no one else may reuse it without permission. Another 8.9% carry a license file GitHub cannot classify, usually a custom or modified license.
| Year started | No license | MIT | Apache-2.0 | Any GPL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 31.4% | 27.6% | 6.8% | 9.3% |
| 2014 | 23.6% | 34.9% | 11.0% | 9.6% |
| 2016 | 27.0% | 36.6% | 12.0% | 8.6% |
| 2018 | 27.4% | 37.1% | 12.9% | 9.4% |
| 2020 | 26.8% | 36.7% | 12.4% | 11.2% |
| 2022 | 26.1% | 35.9% | 13.3% | 12.6% |
| 2024 | 27.9% | 33.8% | 15.2% | 11.9% |
| 2025 | 24.5% | 37.7% | 15.7% | 10.4% |
| 2026 | 23.0% | 42.7% | 13.1% | 9.5% |
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The trend runs one way. 31.4% of the popular repositories started in 2012 had no license and 23.0% of those started in 2026 have none, while MIT rose from 27.6% to 42.7%. Permissive licensing won, and a quarter of popular projects are still published with no permission to reuse them at all.
38.5% of popular repositories have had no push in three years
| Last push | Repositories | Share of popular repositories |
|---|---|---|
| In the last 30 days | 91,851 | 19.1% |
| 30 days to a year ago | 102,355 | 21.3% |
| One to three years ago | 101,068 | 21.0% |
| More than three years ago | 185,154 | 38.5% |
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185,154 of GitHub's popular repositories, 38.5%, have had no push to any branch in more than three years. 19.1% were pushed to in the last 30 days and 40.4% in the last year. 8.4% have been archived by their owners, which the next section looks at on its own.
Popularity keeps a project alive. 58.7% of repositories with 10,000 or more stars were pushed to in the last 30 days and only 5.9% have gone three years without one. Among repositories with 100 to 999 stars it is 16.7% and 41.2%.
| Stars | Repositories | Pushed in the last 30 days | Pushed in the last 3 years | Quiet 3+ years | Quiet 5+ years | Quiet 7+ years | Archived |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000+ | 127 | 78.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 50,000 to 99,999 | 369 | 75.1% | 96.5% | 0.5% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 3.0% |
| 10,000 to 49,999 | 5,090 | 56.8% | 90.4% | 4.0% | 0.8% | 0.1% | 5.6% |
| 5,000 to 9,999 | 7,022 | 44.1% | 83.4% | 9.6% | 3.3% | 1.0% | 7.1% |
| 1,000 to 4,999 | 52,298 | 30.6% | 72.2% | 19.2% | 9.1% | 4.3% | 8.6% |
| 500 to 999 | 58,476 | 22.7% | 64.2% | 27.1% | 14.4% | 7.8% | 8.7% |
| 100 to 499 | 357,046 | 15.6% | 54.8% | 36.7% | 21.8% | 13.1% | 8.5% |
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Every one of the 127 repositories with 100,000 stars or more was pushed to in the last three years, and none is archived. At 100 to 499 stars, 54.8% were pushed to in the last three years, 36.7% have been quiet for three years or more without being archived and 13.1% for seven. Age does not explain the gap: the middle repository in every star range was started 7 to 8 years ago.
A star count says a project was useful once. Two in five popular repositories have been left alone for three years or more, and anyone choosing a dependency by its stars is picking from a shelf where a large part of the stock is no longer maintained.
For every archived repository, 3.9 more went quiet without being archived
| State | Repositories | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Pushed to in the last three years | 282,012 | 58.7% |
| Quiet for three years, never archived | 157,829 | 32.9% |
| Archived by its owner | 40,587 | 8.4% |
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40,587 of GitHub's popular repositories, 8.4%, have been archived by their owners, which makes them read-only and tells visitors the project has ended. 157,829 more, 32.9%, have had no push in three years and were never archived: 3.9 quiet repositories for every archived one.
Archived repositories are as popular as live ones. The middle archived repository has 236 stars and the middle live one 232, archived repositories hold 6.7% of all stars in the set, and 294 of them have 10,000 stars or more.
| Year started | Repositories | Archived | Share archived |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 4,926 | 701 | 14.2% |
| 2011 | 9,158 | 1,267 | 13.8% |
| 2012 | 13,966 | 1,976 | 14.1% |
| 2013 | 19,767 | 2,762 | 14.0% |
| 2014 | 24,898 | 3,345 | 13.4% |
| 2015 | 32,281 | 3,987 | 12.4% |
| 2016 | 36,160 | 4,170 | 11.5% |
| 2017 | 39,980 | 4,012 | 10.0% |
| 2018 | 39,979 | 3,774 | 9.4% |
| 2019 | 39,928 | 3,317 | 8.3% |
| 2020 | 41,269 | 3,152 | 7.6% |
| 2021 | 33,746 | 2,315 | 6.9% |
| 2022 | 30,481 | 1,821 | 6.0% |
| 2023 | 32,184 | 1,683 | 5.2% |
| 2024 | 26,507 | 951 | 3.6% |
| 2025 | 25,942 | 624 | 2.4% |
| 2026 | 25,667 | 196 | 0.8% |
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Age explains most of the pattern. 14.2% of the popular repositories started in 2010 are archived, 7.6% of 2020's and 0.8% of this year's.
| Year started | Repositories | Pushed to in the last 3 years | Quiet 3+ years | Quiet 5+ years | Quiet 7+ years | Archived |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 1,065 | 31.5% | 49.6% | 40.3% | 34.3% | 18.9% |
| 2009 | 2,523 | 36.9% | 49.9% | 40.3% | 32.2% | 13.2% |
| 2010 | 4,926 | 36.9% | 48.8% | 37.5% | 29.0% | 14.2% |
| 2011 | 9,158 | 38.8% | 47.4% | 36.1% | 27.6% | 13.8% |
| 2012 | 13,966 | 36.8% | 49.0% | 37.2% | 28.3% | 14.1% |
| 2013 | 19,767 | 38.2% | 47.8% | 36.3% | 27.1% | 14.0% |
| 2014 | 24,898 | 39.0% | 47.6% | 35.7% | 26.0% | 13.4% |
| 2015 | 32,281 | 40.2% | 47.4% | 34.5% | 24.8% | 12.4% |
| 2016 | 36,160 | 39.7% | 48.8% | 34.5% | 23.9% | 11.5% |
| 2017 | 39,980 | 41.1% | 48.9% | 32.2% | 20.7% | 10.0% |
| 2018 | 39,979 | 44.8% | 45.8% | 27.3% | 14.5% | 9.4% |
| 2019 | 39,928 | 51.2% | 40.5% | 20.2% | 8.3% | |
| 2020 | 41,269 | 57.4% | 34.9% | 14.1% | 7.6% | |
| 2021 | 33,746 | 63.9% | 29.2% | 6.9% | ||
| 2022 | 30,481 | 72.4% | 21.6% | 6.0% | ||
| 2023 | 32,184 | 84.5% | 5.2% |
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The quiet share barely moves with age. Between 47.4% and 49.9% of the popular repositories started in each year from 2008 to 2017 have had no push in three years and were never archived, 48.3% across the ten years together, against 12.3% archived: 3.9 quiet repositories for every archived one. 28.3% of 2012's popular repositories have now gone seven years without a push and still carry no archived badge.
The other side of the same table is as striking. 39.4% of the popular repositories started between 2008 and 2017 were pushed to in the last three years, so a popular project that is still alive after its first few years usually keeps going for a decade or more.
Organisations archive at twice the rate of individuals: 13.0% of popular repositories owned by an organisation are archived, against 6.2% of those owned by a person. Companies retire projects formally, and 253 organisation accounts with "archive" in their name, googlearchive and facebookarchive among them, hold 1,547 popular repositories between them. A developer who loses interest mostly just stops.
| Language | Repositories | Archived | Share archived |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ruby | 7,655 | 1,054 | 13.8% |
| Objective-C | 6,737 | 881 | 13.1% |
| PHP | 11,986 | 1,510 | 12.6% |
| JavaScript | 56,674 | 6,880 | 12.1% |
| C# | 15,576 | 1,598 | 10.3% |
| Go | 21,581 | 2,167 | 10.0% |
| Shell | 12,325 | 1,237 | 10.0% |
| Java | 26,584 | 2,627 | 9.9% |
| Swift | 8,552 | 773 | 9.0% |
| Kotlin | 6,863 | 614 | 8.9% |
| TypeScript | 36,669 | 2,840 | 7.7% |
| HTML | 12,361 | 949 | 7.7% |
| C++ | 25,615 | 1,751 | 6.8% |
| Rust | 13,796 | 931 | 6.7% |
| C | 18,605 | 1,224 | 6.6% |
| Python | 95,056 | 5,888 | 6.2% |
| Jupyter Notebook | 11,510 | 540 | 4.7% |
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By language, Ruby has the highest archived share at 13.8% and Jupyter Notebook the lowest at 4.7%, with Python at 6.2%. The languages at the top are the ones whose popular projects are oldest, which is the age effect again.
| Year of last push | Archived repositories | Share of archived repositories |
|---|---|---|
| Before 2012 | 146 | 0.4% |
| 2012 | 169 | 0.4% |
| 2013 | 278 | 0.7% |
| 2014 | 412 | 1.0% |
| 2015 | 763 | 1.9% |
| 2016 | 1,238 | 3.1% |
| 2017 | 1,959 | 4.8% |
| 2018 | 2,737 | 6.7% |
| 2019 | 3,148 | 7.8% |
| 2020 | 3,621 | 8.9% |
| 2021 | 4,047 | 10.0% |
| 2022 | 4,664 | 11.5% |
| 2023 | 5,518 | 13.6% |
| 2024 | 4,884 | 12.0% |
| 2025 | 3,693 | 9.1% |
| 2026 | 3,310 | 8.2% |
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By the year of their last push, the archived repositories stopped most often in 2023: 5,518 of them, 13.6%. 29.3% had their last push in 2024 or later. GitHub does not publish the date a repository was archived through the data collected here, so the last push stands in for it, and the most recent years will keep rising as owners archive projects that were still active until recently.
The first AI wave is already being retired. 7.2% of the popular AI repositories started in 2023 are archived, 269 of 3,752, against 5.0% of everything else started that year.
| Rank | Repository | Stars | Language | Started | Last push |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 |  DopplerHQ/awesome-interview-questions | 84,659 | 2015 | 2024 | |
| #2 |  sdmg15/Best-websites-a-programmer-should-visit | 76,248 | 2017 | 2025 | |
| #3 |  base/node | 68,366 | Shell | 2023 | 2026 |
| #4 |  localstack/localstack | 65,126 | Python | 2016 | 2026 |
| #5 |  gsd-build/get-shit-done | 64,465 | JavaScript | 2025 | 2026 |
| #6 |  minio/minio | 61,353 | Go | 2015 | 2026 |
| #7 |  atom/atom | 60,730 | JavaScript | 2012 | 2023 |
| #8 |  angular/angular.js | 58,505 | JavaScript | 2010 | 2024 |
| #9 |  FlowiseAI/Flowise | 55,475 | TypeScript | 2023 | 2026 |
| #10 |  AntonOsika/gpt-engineer | 55,083 | Python | 2023 | 2025 |
| #11 |  maybe-finance/maybe | 54,267 | Ruby | 2024 | 2025 |
| #12 |  GitSquared/edex-ui | 45,057 | JavaScript | 2017 | 2021 |
| #13 |  dylanaraps/pure-bash-bible | 41,713 | Shell | 2018 | 2023 |
| #14 |  google-research/bert | 40,043 | Python | 2018 | 2024 |
| #15 |  siddharthvaddem/openscreen | 39,966 | TypeScript | 2025 | 2026 |
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The most-starred archived repository is DopplerHQ/awesome-interview-questions with 84,659 stars. The list mixes famous endings, GitHub's own Atom editor and AngularJS among them, with AI projects started in 2023 such as gpt-engineer and AgentGPT that have since been archived.
An archived badge is the honest way to end a project, and most abandoned projects never get one. For the rest, the only signal a visitor has is the date of the last push.
Only 480,428 GitHub repositories have 100 or more stars
| Stars | Public repositories | Share of repositories with a star |
|---|---|---|
| Any, including none | 252,281,162 | |
| 1 or more | 32,209,687 | 100% |
| 10 or more | 2,879,350 | 8.94% |
| 50 or more | 831,649 | 2.58% |
| 100 or more | 480,428 | 1.49% |
| 500 or more | 123,382 | 0.383% |
| 1,000 or more | 64,906 | 0.202% |
| 5,000 or more | 12,608 | 0.0391% |
| 10,000 or more | 5,586 | 0.0173% |
| 50,000 or more | 496 | 0.00154% |
| 100,000 or more | 127 | 0.000394% |
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Only 480,428 public repositories on GitHub have 100 or more stars, and they are the ones this report measures. 831,649 have 50 or more, 2,879,350 have 10 or more and 32,209,687 have at least one. Further up, 64,906 have 1,000 stars or more and 127 have 100,000 or more.
GitHub search counts 252.3 million public repositories that are not forks, and about seven in eight of them have no stars at all. GitHub's Octoverse 2025 report puts the total higher: 395 million public repositories with forks included, and 630 million once private ones are added. A hundred stars is a far higher bar than the round number suggests, and this report covers the top one and a half percent of the repositories anyone starred.
The top 1% of repositories hold a third of all stars
| Stars | Repositories | Share of repositories | Stars held | Share of all stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000+ | 127 | 0.03% | 22,369,715 | 5.34% |
| 10,000 to 99,999 | 5,459 | 1.14% | 124,073,510 | 29.63% |
| 1,000 to 9,999 | 59,320 | 12.35% | 156,369,463 | 37.34% |
| 500 to 999 | 58,476 | 12.17% | 40,698,779 | 9.72% |
| 100 to 499 | 357,046 | 74.32% | 75,251,244 | 17.97% |
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GitHub's 480,428 popular repositories hold 418.8 million stars between them. The top 1% of repositories by stars hold 33.0% of them and the top 10% hold 67.6%. 127 repositories have 100,000 stars or more and 5,586 have 10,000 or more.
| Rank by stars | Repositories | Stars held | Share of all stars | Cumulative share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 to #10 | 10 | 4,210,070 | 1.0% | 1.0% |
| #11 to #100 | 90 | 15,262,920 | 3.6% | 4.7% |
| #101 to #1,000 | 900 | 48,454,388 | 11.6% | 16.2% |
| #1,001 to #10,000 | 9,000 | 112,646,390 | 26.9% | 43.1% |
| #10,001 to #100,000 | 90,000 | 149,856,962 | 35.8% | 78.9% |
| #100,001 to #480,428 | 380,428 | 88,331,981 | 21.1% | 100.0% |
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By rank, the ten most-starred repositories hold 1.0% of every star in the set, the top 100 hold 4.7%, the top 1,000 hold 16.2% and the top 10,000 hold 43.1%. The top 100,000 hold 78.9%, which leaves 21.1% for the other 380,428.
At the other end, 74.3% of popular repositories have between 100 and 499 stars, and the middle popular repository has 232.
Attention on GitHub is heavily concentrated. The top tenth of popular projects collect two thirds of it, and three quarters of the set shares less than a fifth.
The most-starred repositories on GitHub
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codecrafters-io/build-your-own-x is the most-starred repository on GitHub with 549,285 stars, a curated list of tutorials for rebuilding well-known software from scratch. sindresorhus/awesome is second with 509,836 and public-apis/public-apis third with 482,820.
Nine of the ten most-starred repositories are reference and learning material: curated lists, free books, study guides, developer roadmaps and freeCodeCamp's curriculum. openclaw/openclaw, an AI assistant started in 2025, is the only application among them, and it reached 390,383 stars in under two years.
The most-starred list rewards things developers save for later more than things they run. It is a list of bookmarks, and the one exception is the fastest-growing project on it.
Individual developers own two thirds of popular repositories
| Year started | Share owned by an organisation |
|---|---|
| 2010 | 33.6% |
| 2011 | 37.0% |
| 2012 | 36.0% |
| 2013 | 37.1% |
| 2014 | 38.3% |
| 2015 | 36.2% |
| 2016 | 34.7% |
| 2017 | 32.6% |
| 2018 | 33.2% |
| 2019 | 33.2% |
| 2020 | 33.2% |
| 2021 | 33.3% |
| 2022 | 33.5% |
| 2023 | 32.5% |
| 2024 | 33.2% |
| 2025 | 33.1% |
| 2026 | 25.5% |
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Individual developers own 319,138 of GitHub's popular repositories, 66.4%, and organisations own 161,290, 33.6%. The popular repositories are spread across 190,608 personal accounts and 65,163 organisation accounts.
The organisation share held between 32% and 39% for every year from 2010 to 2025. Among the popular repositories started in 2026 it is 25.5%, the lowest of any year since 2010.
The drop arrives with AI coding tools, which let one person ship a project that people star. This year's popular repositories come from individuals more than in any year since 2010, and companies are a smaller part of the new wave than of the old.
The GitHub organisations with the most stars
| Rank | Organisation | Popular repositories | Stars | Most-starred repository |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 |  Microsoftmicrosoft | 1,905 | 4,121,876 | vscode |
| #2 |  Googlegoogle | 1,043 | 2,098,083 | material-design-icons |
| #3 |  The Apache Software Foundationapache | 624 | 1,373,960 | superset |
| #4 |  OpenAIopenai | 180 | 995,922 | codex |
| #5 |  Meta Researchfacebookresearch | 635 | 953,536 | segment-anything |
| #6 |  Alibabaalibaba | 288 | 917,749 | open-code-review |
| #7 |  GitHubgithub | 205 | 732,402 | gitignore |
| #8 |  Hugging Facehuggingface | 179 | 727,581 | transformers |
| #9 |  DeepSeekdeepseek-ai | 39 | 665,492 | deepseek-harness |
| #10 |  Anthropicanthropics | 63 | 651,972 | skills |
| #11 |  Vuevuejs | 84 | 631,757 | vue |
| #12 |  Metafacebook | 107 | 584,616 | docusaurus |
| #13 |  Tencent | 186 | 566,985 | WeKnora |
| #14 |  CodeCrafterscodecrafters-io | 9 | 551,087 | build-your-own-x |
| #15 |  Vercelvercel | 108 | 529,296 | next.js |
| #16 |  freeCodeCamp.orgfreeCodeCamp | 36 | 522,451 | freeCodeCamp |
| #17 |  react | 8 | 512,942 | react |
| #18 |  tensorflow | 87 | 502,098 | tensorflow |
| #19 |  public-apis | 1 | 482,820 | public-apis |
| #20 |  NVIDIA CorporationNVIDIA | 257 | 471,018 | NemoClaw |
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The Microsoft organisation account leads every organisation on GitHub with 4.1 million stars across 1,905 popular repositories. Google is second with 2.1 million, and third is The Apache Software Foundation with 1.4 million.
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By number of popular repositories the order changes further down. Microsoft leads with 1,905 and Google follows with 1,043, and publishers and sample-code accounts such as Packt appear high on this table and low on the stars one.
Stars and repository counts reward different strategies. A large company publishes hundreds of useful projects that each collect a few hundred stars, and an AI lab can match its total with a handful of models everyone wants to try.
The developers with the most stars on GitHub
| Rank | Developer | Popular repositories | Stars | Most-starred repository |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | sindresorhus | 457 | 1,063,419 | awesome |
| #2 | karpathy | 51 | 493,130 | autoresearch |
| #3 | donnemartin | 10 | 471,225 | system-design-primer |
| #4 | nilbuild | 24 | 469,301 | developer-roadmap |
| #5 | jwasham | 8 | 375,808 | coding-interview-university |
| #6 | vinta | 9 | 329,371 | awesome-python |
| #7 | mattpocock | 19 | 299,117 | skills |
| #8 | obra | 18 | 297,990 | superpowers |
| #9 | trimstray | 14 | 294,804 | the-book-of-secret-knowledge |
| #10 | 996icu | 1 | 277,208 | 996.ICU |
| #11 | affaan-m | 6 | 269,118 | ECC |
| #12 | torvalds | 9 | 262,009 | linux |
| #13 | trekhleb | 17 | 257,430 | javascript-algorithms |
| #14 | 521xueweihan | 7 | 227,982 | HelloGitHub |
| #15 | ruanyf | 31 | 218,820 | weekly |
| #16 | getify | 26 | 215,337 | You-Dont-Know-JS |
| #17 | jaywcjlove | 58 | 213,660 | awesome-mac |
| #18 | jackfrued | 4 | 201,414 | Python-100-Days |
| #19 | justjavac | 39 | 197,850 | free-programming-books-zh_CN |
| #20 | CyC2018 | 5 | 193,159 | CS-Notes |
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sindresorhus has more stars than any other individual developer on GitHub, 1,063,419 across 457 popular repositories, and is also the individual with the most popular repositories. karpathy is second with 493,130 across 51.
| Rank | Developer | Popular repositories | Stars | Most-starred repository |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | sindresorhus | 457 | 1,063,419 | awesome |
| #2 | keijiro | 214 | 90,450 | AICommand |
| #3 | lucidrains | 175 | 175,548 | vit-pytorch |
| #4 | bradtraversy | 173 | 177,936 | design-resources-for-developers |
| #5 | small-bears | 168 | 17,821 | server |
| #6 | llSourcell | 130 | 60,190 | Learn_Machine_Learning_in_3_Months |
| #7 | egoist | 107 | 69,760 | tsup |
| #8 | antfu | 107 | 66,198 | eslint-config |
| #9 | adrianhajdin | 104 | 125,760 | project_3D_developer_portfolio |
| #10 | tj | 98 | 136,713 | commander.js |
| #11 | geerlingguy | 83 | 66,636 | ansible-for-devops |
| #12 | simonw | 82 | 56,055 | llm |
| #13 | mafintosh | 78 | 36,635 | peerflix |
| #14 | iamshaunjp | 75 | 25,760 | Complete-React-Tutorial |
| #15 | WebDevSimplified | 75 | 21,398 | useful-custom-react-hooks |
| #16 | phodal | 74 | 88,338 | github |
| #17 | ankane | 74 | 81,927 | pghero |
| #18 | lukeed | 73 | 56,673 | clsx |
| #19 | krishnaik06 | 72 | 48,910 | The-Grand-Complete-Data-Science-Materials |
| #20 | mattn | 71 | 47,624 | go-sqlite3 |
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17 of the twenty developers with the most stars owe more than half of their stars to a single repository: a study guide, a list or, increasingly, a set of skills and instructions for AI coding agents. The table by count is a different set of people, developers who have kept publishing libraries and demos for years, led by sindresorhus with 457, keijiro with 214 and lucidrains with 175.
Among individuals, fame on GitHub comes from one repository that everyone bookmarks, while a steady output of useful libraries earns a place on the second table and rarely on the first.
89.6% of new repositories default to main
| Year started | Share defaulting to main |
|---|---|
| 2014 | 9.0% |
| 2015 | 9.4% |
| 2016 | 9.7% |
| 2017 | 10.0% |
| 2018 | 10.9% |
| 2019 | 12.9% |
| 2020 | 25.8% |
| 2021 | 67.6% |
| 2022 | 73.9% |
| 2023 | 79.4% |
| 2024 | 83.5% |
| 2025 | 86.6% |
| 2026 | 89.6% |
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89.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026 use main as their default branch, against 12.9% of those started in 2019 and 67.6% of those started in 2021. The jump came when GitHub made main the default for new repositories in October 2020.
Across every popular repository, master still leads with 59.0% against 36.6% for main, because most older projects never renamed their branch.
A default decides almost everything. One setting changed at GitHub moved nine in ten new projects, while the projects that existed before it mostly kept the name they started with.
A third of popular forks have more stars than the repository they forked
| Popular forks | Forks | Share of popular forks |
|---|---|---|
| More stars than the repository they forked | 3,478 | 34.7% |
| Ten times its stars or more | 1,134 | 11.3% |
| Forked from a repository now archived | 1,261 | 12.6% |
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10,015 forks have 100 or more stars of their own, and 3,478 of them, 34.7%, have more stars than the repository they were forked from. 1,134 have at least ten times as many.
1,261 popular forks, 12.6%, were forked from a repository whose owner has since archived it, and 477 of those have overtaken it. These are the projects where the community carried on after the original author stopped.
A fork that outgrows its parent is how open source routes around an abandoned project, and on GitHub it happens to a third of the forks that get noticed at all.
Where popular projects point their homepage
| Where the homepage points | Repositories | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Its own domain | 113,743 | 68.4% |
| GitHub Pages | 31,980 | 19.2% |
| A GitHub page | 7,489 | 4.5% |
| Read the Docs | 3,579 | 2.2% |
| Vercel | 2,808 | 1.7% |
| Other hosts | 6,659 | 4.0% |
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34.6% of popular repositories set a homepage, 166,258 of them. 68.4% of those point at the project's own domain and 19.2% at a site on GitHub Pages, GitHub's free static hosting.
The rest is split between documentation and deployment services: Read the Docs for 3,579 repositories, Vercel for 2,808, Netlify for 984 and GitBook for 315. 2,251 repositories point at a paper on arXiv, the code behind a piece of published research.
Two thirds of popular repositories publish no homepage at all, which leaves the repository page as the only front door most open source projects have.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most popular programming language on GitHub? Python is the primary language of 19.8% of the 480,428 public repositories with 100 or more stars, ahead of JavaScript at 11.8% and TypeScript at 7.6%. Among repositories started in 2026, TypeScript has closed much of the gap at 18.6% against Python's 29.3%.
What is the most-starred repository on GitHub? codecrafters-io/build-your-own-x, with 549,285 stars as of September 2026. sindresorhus/awesome is second with 509,836 and public-apis/public-apis third with 482,820.
Which company has the most repositories on GitHub? Microsoft's organisation account owns 1,905 popular repositories, more than any other account, and Google's owns 1,043. Both companies publish under several more accounts as well, such as Azure and dotnet for Microsoft and tensorflow and flutter for Google.
How many GitHub repositories have more than 100 stars? 480,428 public repositories had 100 or more stars as of September 2026, not counting forks. Another 10,015 forks cleared 100 stars of their own.
What license do most GitHub projects use? MIT, on 35.8% of popular repositories, followed by Apache 2.0 on 12.4%. 26.8% have no license GitHub can detect.
How many GitHub repositories are about AI? 23.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026 carry an AI topic, against 4.1% of those started in 2020. Across every year, 27,625 popular repositories carry one, and because half of all repositories set no topics the real number is higher.
Do GitHub repositories use main or master? 89.6% of the popular repositories started in 2026 default to main. Across all popular repositories master still leads at 59.0%, because older projects rarely renamed their default branch.
How many GitHub repositories have 10, 100 or 1,000 stars? 2,879,350 public repositories have 10 or more stars, 831,649 have 50 or more and 480,428 have 100 or more, forks excluded. 59,320 of the popular ones sit between 1,000 and 9,999 stars and 5,586 have 10,000 or more.
How many GitHub repositories are abandoned? 38.5% of popular repositories have had no push in three years and 8.4% are archived, so for every archived repository 3.9 more went quiet without being marked. Among repositories with 10,000 or more stars only 5.9% have gone three years without a push.
Methodology and sources
What popular means. A popular repository, throughout this report, is a public GitHub repository with 100 or more stars that is not a fork. 480,428 repositories cleared that bar on 24 September 2026, and every figure is a share of them. GitHub hosts 630 million repositories, 395 million of them public, by the count in its Octoverse 2025 report, and most have no stars at all, so nothing here describes GitHub as a whole: it describes the part developers have chosen to star. The 10,015 forks with 100 or more stars are counted separately and appear only in the forks section.
How the list was collected. Every repository was read from GitHub's own API.
Stars. Star counts are as they stood on the collection day, and a few repositories slipped just under 100 while the list was being read. A star is a bookmark, not a measure of use, and stars can be bought; nothing here tries to detect or remove paid stars, so the tables report what GitHub reports.
Language, license and topics. The language is the one GitHub's Linguist library detects as the repository's primary language, by bytes of code. It is the language a repository is written in today, so a project started in 2008 and later rewritten in TypeScript counts as TypeScript in its start year. The license is the one GitHub detects from the repository's license file; "a license file GitHub cannot classify" is GitHub's NOASSERTION value, and "no license" means no license file was found. Topics are the labels each owner sets, and 50.2% of popular repositories set at least one.
What counts as AI. A repository counts as AI when it carries any of these topics: ai, llm, llms, agent, agents, ai-agent, ai-agents, agentic-ai, mcp, mcp-server, chatgpt, openai, claude, claude-code, gpt, rag, generative-ai, deep-learning, machine-learning, langchain, ollama, gemini, deepseek, vibe-coding or stable-diffusion. A repository about AI that sets none of them is not counted, so the AI figures are a floor.
Star thresholds. The repositories below 100 stars were not collected, so the counts at 10 and 50 stars, the number with at least one star and the overall total are the totals GitHub search reported on 26 September 2026, forks excluded. GitHub flags that total as incomplete, and its Octoverse report counts 395 million public repositories once forks are included. Every figure from 100 stars up is the collected set.
Years. A repository counts in the year it was created. Older years have had longer for their repositories to reach 100 stars, so a year's count keeps rising after it ends and 2026's, which covers only part of the year, is a floor.
Activity. The last push is the most recent push to any branch, measured from the collection day, and includes pushes made by bots. Archived is the read-only state an owner sets on a finished or abandoned project.
Owners. Whether an account is a person or an organisation is GitHub's own classification, and an organisation's name in the tables is the one it gives itself on GitHub.
Descriptions, homepages and forks. A description counts as Chinese when it contains Chinese characters and no Japanese kana. The homepage is the address each owner typed into the repository's website field. A fork is compared with the repository it was forked from directly, with both star counts read on the same day. Language logos come from Devicon under the MIT license and remain their owners' trademarks; organisation and repository icons are each owner's GitHub avatar.