I’m always trying to find how many apps are written (and, of course, running) in Java. Here are recent numbers I have on hand:
- “[N]early 70% of respondents say that more than half of their applications are built with Java or run on a JVM.” Azul survey, 2025.
- “98% of companies we surveyed use Java, with 57% saying it is the backbone of most of their application and infrastructure estate.” [Azul survey, 2023](98% of companies we surveyed use Java, with 57% saying it is the backbone of most of their application and infrastructure estate.).
- Java is consistently on the top three languages in the long-running RedMonk programming index.
- If you look at the 2024 Stack OverFlow Developer Survey, I think Spring Boot is the top Java framework used. Not the top framework for all languages: when it comes to web frameworks, that’s of course Node. But! It’s the top Java-based framework. I think what’d you want to look at is how many of those Node apps - and other types of apps - also work with Java apps.
There’s lots of Java out there, and civilization would grind to a distressing halt if it suddenly ceased to exist.