AI use among software developers grows but trust remains an issue – Stack Overflow survey

While the number of developers using AI keeps growing, many of them do not trust the accuracy of output from AI tools, according to the latest Stack Overflow survey of software developers.

Released July 29, the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found what Stack Overflow referred to as a widening AI trust gap. For the third year in a row, the company’s survey found an increasing number of developers using or planning to use AI tools year over year, 84% in 2025 versus 76% in 2024. However, 46% of the developers surveyed said they do not trust the accuracy of the output from AI tools, versus 31% last year. 

This year’s survey included an expanded section dedicated to the growing landscape of AI, with 15 new questions on the topic. “The growing lack of trust in AI tools stood out to us as the key data point in this year’s survey, especially given the increased pace of growth and adoption of these AI tools. AI is a powerful tool, but it has significant risks of misinformation or can lack complexity or relevance,” said Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow, in a statement.

The 2025 edition of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, now in its fifteenth year, received more than 49,000 responses from 177 countries. There were 62 questions, focused on 314 different technologies, including the new focus on AI agent tools, large language models (LLMs), and community platforms. Regarding the use of AI tools, 64% of developers said they do not perceive AI as a threat to their jobs, a slight decrease from 2024 (68%). As for the top frustrations with AI tools, 66% cited “Dealing with AI solutions that are almost right, but not quite,” while 45% cited “Debugging AI-generated code is more time-consuming.” 

Regarding the use of AI agents, 52% of developers either don’t use them or stick to simpler AI tools, while 38% have no plans to adopt them. However, among the developers who do use AI agents, 70% said that agents have reduced the time spent on development tasks, and 69% said agents have increased their productivity. Only 38% said AI agents have improved the quality of their code. Most respondents, 72%, said they are not currently vibe coding.

Other findings of the 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey:

Visual Studio Code (76%) and Visual Studio (29%) still rank as developers’ top IDEs.

Adoption of AI-enabled IDEs is significant, including Cursor (18%), Claude Code (10%), and Windsurf (5%).

LLMs used by most developers are OpenAI’s GPT models (81%), Claude Sonnet models (43%), and Gemini Flash models (35%).

Adoption of Python, used by 58% of respondents, has accelerated, with a 7% jump from 2024 to 2025.

69% of developers have spent time in the last year learning a new programming language or new coding techniques.