Claude Code terminal session in action, representing the AI coding tool landscape surveyed in the JetBrains April 2026 AI Pulse report Image via github.com/anthropics/claude-code
by VibecodedThis

JetBrains: 90% of Developers Use AI Tools at Work. Claude Code Has the Highest Satisfaction of Any Tool.

JetBrains published the April 2026 results of their AI Pulse survey today — 10,000+ developers across 8 languages. Claude Code and Cursor are tied at 18% workplace adoption. GitHub Copilot leads at 29%. And Claude Code's NPS is 54.

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JetBrains published the latest wave of their AI Pulse survey today, and the results capture exactly how fast the AI coding tool landscape has shifted over the past year. The January 2026 wave covered more than 10,000 professional developers across eight languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French, and Portuguese.

The headline finding: 90% of developers regularly use at least one AI tool at work for coding and development tasks. A year ago, adoption was real but contested. Now it’s nearly universal.

What’s changed is who’s using what.

The Adoption Numbers

GitHub Copilot is still the most widely-known and most widely-used AI coding tool in the market. 76% of developers have heard of it, and 29% use it at work. That lead in awareness is durable — Copilot has been in the market for years and ships inside Visual Studio, VS Code, and JetBrains IDEs. The distribution advantage is real.

But the second position is now a two-way tie that nobody predicted this time last year.

Claude Code and Cursor both sit at 18% workplace adoption.

For Cursor, that number reflects a product that became the default choice for many early vibe coding workflows before expanding to serious professional use. 69% of developers have heard of it — second only to Copilot in awareness.

For Claude Code, 18% is a different kind of number. In April–June 2025, Claude Code was at roughly 3% workplace adoption. By September 2025, it was at about 12%. By January 2026, it’s at 18%. That’s a 6x increase in adoption in under a year, and the awareness gap has closed dramatically — from 31% awareness in April–June 2025 to 57% in January 2026.

The rest of the field:

ToolAwarenessWorkplace Adoption
GitHub Copilot76%29%
Cursor69%18%
Claude Code57%18%
ChatGPT (for coding)28%
JetBrains AI Assistant9%
Google Antigravity6%
Junie5%
Gemini (for coding)8%
Claude chatbot (for coding)7%

ChatGPT’s 28% is worth noting separately from Codex. That’s developers using the chat interface for coding help, not the agentic Codex product. It reflects a different workflow — chat-based iteration rather than delegated task execution.

The Satisfaction Gap

Adoption is one thing. What developers think of the tools they’re using is another.

Claude Code has the highest product satisfaction metrics of any tool in the survey. Its CSAT (satisfaction score) is 91%, and its NPS (net promoter score — how likely users are to recommend it) is 54. Both are the highest in the field.

This is the more interesting story behind the adoption numbers. Tools that grow through distribution often have mixed satisfaction — developers use them because they’re there, not because they love them. Claude Code’s growth is happening alongside sustained, high satisfaction, which suggests the user base is expanding to more developers who are genuinely choosing it rather than defaulting to it.

Google Antigravity had a rough launch but hit 6% adoption by January 2026 — not a trivial number for a product that only shipped in November 2025. JetBrains Junie reached 5%, primarily within JetBrains IDE users.

What’s Driving Claude Code’s Numbers

The JetBrains survey data aligns with what developers who’ve switched have consistently reported: Claude Code’s agentic model — single agent, direct terminal access, no separate IDE to learn — fits workflows that Cursor and Copilot were designed around differently.

Claude Code runs entirely in the terminal, works with any editor, and delegates tasks at the level of “fix this bug” or “refactor this module” rather than “complete this line.” That distinction matters most for senior developers who know what they want to build and want to direct an agent, not be prompted by one.

The addition of Routines — cloud-based automations that run on schedule, via API call, or GitHub event — shipped this week as a research preview. That’s the kind of expansion that turns a tool developers use into infrastructure their workflows depend on. The adoption curve is likely not done.

The Market in January vs. Now

The survey reflects January 2026 data. A few things have happened since:

The January snapshot is the most recent comprehensive cross-tool data available. The next wave will be the one to watch — the competition has compressed significantly, and the second-tier players are growing fast enough that the rankings at the next data point could look materially different again.

The 90% adoption number means the market is no longer about whether developers use AI. It’s about which tool wins their daily workflow, and right now, that’s still very much in motion.

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