The State of Developer Tools 2026: Data From 1,172 Tools

Quick answer: Across the 1,172 developer tools live in our directory on 9 October 2026, the biggest shift is AI: 2 of the 612 tools we listed in 2022 were AI tools, against 31% of everything added in 2026. AI tools also churn fastest. 21% of AI tools ever listed have been removed, against 15% of the rest, and 5.7% are currently down.

Developer surveys tell you what people say they use. This is a census of the tools themselves. We run a curated directory of developer resources, every entry is tagged and dated, and a link checker probes every listed URL. Every number below comes from that table, pulled the day this was published.

What does the developer tools landscape look like in 2026?

The 1,172 live tools span 73 categories. A tool can carry up to three tags (43% carry one, 33% two, 25% three), so tag counts add up to more than 1,172.

| Category | Tools tagged | |---|---| | Programming | 215 | | AI | 159 | | Productivity | 125 | | Marketing | 89 | | UI | 87 | | Tooling | 78 | | Design | 77 | | Learn | 73 | | Template | 58 | | Startup, SEO | 51 each |

Programming still leads, but almost entirely on old entries. 165 of the 215 Programming tags belong to tools listed in 2022. In 2026, only 16 new tools were tagged Programming.

How fast is AI taking over developer tools?

Share of each year's new listings tagged AI:

| Year listed | New tools | Tagged AI | Share | |---|---|---|---| | 2022 | 612 | 2 | 0.3% | | 2023 | 108 | 14 | 13% | | 2024 | 159 | 53 | 33% | | 2025 | 169 | 51 | 30% | | 2026 (to 9 Oct) | 124 | 39 | 31% |

AI went from a rounding error to a third of new developer tools in two years, and has plateaued there since 2024. It is now 13.6% of the whole live catalogue. Recent additions such as Causeway, an AI browser tool, and PixelVault, AI image hosting, are typical: AI is usually a feature of a tool in another category, not the whole product. 141 of the 159 AI tools (89%) carry at least one other tag.

The mix of what developers ship has moved with it. The top tags of the 2022 cohort were Programming, UI, Learn, Design and Editor. Since 2025 they are AI (90 of 293 new tools), Productivity (75), Tooling (57), Marketing (53) and Programming (27). Developer tools are drifting from "help me write code" towards "help me ship and sell what I built". Our roundup of developer productivity tools is a good example of that newer shape.

Is the number of developer tools still growing?

Yes, and faster. New listings per year: 108 in 2023, 159 in 2024, 169 in 2025, and 124 so far in 2026. The pace doubled in late summer, with 22 new tools in August and 20 in September against 9 to 11 a month earlier in the year, so 2026 could still become the biggest year since the 2022 launch.

How many developer tools die?

Our link checker probes every listed URL weekly, gives blocked or slow responses a second opinion from a real browser, and re-checks failures daily. On 8 October 2026, 36 live listings (3.1%) were failing:

• 26 returned an HTTP error page
• 4 sat on a domain that no longer resolves
• 6 timed out, failed to connect or had broken TLS

13 of those 36 have failed 75 checks in a row. One more tool now redirects to a different product's domain, the quieter way a tool dies.

Removals tell the longer story. Of the 1,392 tools ever published in the directory, 220 (15.8%) have been archived: removed as dead, duplicated or no longer fit to list. By the year they were listed:

| Year listed | Ever listed | Archived | |---|---|---| | 2022 | 726 | 15.7% | | 2023 | 136 | 20.6% | | 2024 | 204 | 22.1% | | 2025 | 197 | 14.2% | | 2026 | 129 | 3.9% |

The 2023 and 2024 cohorts have aged worse than the 2022 one did. Nearly half of the 45 tools archived from the 2024 cohort (22) were AI tools.

Do AI developer tools die faster?

Yes, on both measures we have:

| | AI tools | Everything else | |---|---|---| | Ever archived | 20.5% (41 of 200) | 15.0% (179 of 1,192) | | Currently failing | 5.7% (9 of 159) | 2.7% (27 of 1,013) |

An AI tool in our directory is roughly twice as likely to be down right now as any other tool, and over a third more likely to have been removed already. The newest listings fail most often overall (6.5% of 2026 additions are currently down), which fits a market where many tools launch before they are stable. Older, boring tools like DevDocs or Hoppscotch just keep working.

How many developer tools are free?

We cannot measure that properly, and we would rather say so than guess. No field in our directory records pricing. A text match on tool feature lists finds that 250 of the 1,042 tools with one (24%) explicitly mention a free plan or an open-source license. That is a floor, not a count: plenty of free tools never say so in their feature list. 29 live tools carry the Open Source tag.

What should you take from this?

1. Pick boring tools for load-bearing work. A 5.7% live failure rate means one AI tool in 18 you depend on is down today.
2. Treat new AI tools as trials. One in five AI tools we listed is already gone.
3. Keep an alternative bookmarked from the same category, so a dead tool costs you an afternoon, not a migration.

Methodology

Snapshot of the production dr_pa_resources table taken 9 October 2026. Scope: rows in the developer resources directory with status = published and archived = false, 1,172 tools. Categories are the tags on each listing (up to three). "Year listed" is the year of published_at; 585 of the 612 tools dated 2022 arrived with the directory's launch import on 14 February 2022. Link health is the latest result of our link checker, which re-checked every failing row on 8 October 2026. Archived rates use all 1,392 tools ever published. The free-plan figure is a keyword match on feature lists, as described above. We will refresh these numbers monthly.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of new developer tools are AI tools?

In our directory, 31% of developer tools added in 2026 are tagged AI, after 33% in 2024 and 30% in 2025. In 2022 it was 2 tools out of 612. Across the whole live catalogue, AI tools are 13.6%.

How many developer tools shut down?

Of the 1,392 tools ever listed in our directory, 15.8% have been archived as dead, duplicated or unfit, and 3.1% of live listings currently fail our link checker. For AI tools both numbers are higher: 20.5% archived and 5.7% failing.

What are the most common types of developer tools?

By tag, Programming (215 tools), AI (159), Productivity (125), Marketing (89) and UI (87). Programming leads only because of older listings; among tools added since 2025, AI, Productivity and Tooling lead.

Where can I find maintained developer tools?

Browse a category on devresourc.es, such as Tooling or Productivity. Every listed URL is probed by our link checker, and tools that fail are flagged and reviewed rather than left to rot.