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Big Dev Survey: AWS Edged Out by Docker and npm for Top Cloud Tool

• By David Ramel
• 08/01/2025

In last year's massive Stack Overflow developer survey, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud outpaced fellow hyperscalers Microsoft (Azure) and Google (GCP) for No. 1, but that's not the case this year.

That's because this year's survey doesn't include a "Cloud platforms" section like last year's survey did (see "AWS the Top Cloud for Developers (Unless They're Beginners)").

Instead, this year's report includes a section on tools, where AWS is edged out by Docker at No. 1 and npm at No. 2. Here, tools covers a wide range of products, as the question in question, in the "Cloud development" subsection, reads: "Which cloud platforms, containerization/orchestration tools, package managers, build tools, and infrastructure as code solutions have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)"

Note that chart is for all respondents, as SO allows users to break out results by different criteria.

"Docker has moved from a popular tool to a near-universal one," said the report, announced on July 29. "After years of growth, it experienced a +17 point jump in usage from 2024 to 2025, the largest single-year increase of any technology surveyed. This is partially due to consolidating some technology sectors in this year's survey."

Another cloud development chart with the same long-winded question, in a different section, shows AWS at No. 2 behind Docker.

"Rust's growth is directly tied to the success of its build tool and package manager, Cargo, which is the most admired (71%) cloud development and infrastructure tool this year," said this section's text blurb about the Rust programming language, which doesn't appear in the chart but was discussed previously.

This year's report was unsurprisingly all about AI, and on a chart of recently introduced tech, with new tags added in past three years, Amazon Bedrock was No. 11 (Google Gemini was No. 1)

Other data points of interest to readers of AWSInsider include: Amazon Redshift was No. 27 on a chart of databases; Amazon Titan models were No. 15 on a list of large language models (OpenAI GPT was No. 1).

All About AI
As far as the heavy emphasis on AI in this year's report, SO said in its announcement: "For the third year in a row, our survey demonstrated an increase in the number of developers using AI tools year over year, with 84% saying they use or plan to use AI tools in their development process, up from 76% in 2024. However, 46% of developers said they don't trust the accuracy of the output from AI tools, a significant increase from 31% last year.This year's Developer Survey includes an expanded section dedicated to the growing landscape of artificial intelligence, with 15 new questions to glean insights on top usage and utility questions for AI-enabled technology and AI agent tools, AI's impact on how developers work, and whether developers have engaged in 'vibe coding' in the last year."

Related findings as presented by the company include:

• A key frustration from 45% of respondents was that debugging AI-generated code is time-consuming, despite often repeated claims that coding can be handled solely by AI tools.
• If AI can do most coding tasks in the future, developers told us why they would still want to ask another person for help:
• • Three quarters (75.3%) of users said they don't trust AI answers, 61.7% said they have ethical or security concerns about code, and 61.3% said they want to fully understand their code.
• AI agents are not being used by the majority of developers, with only 31% using them currently, 17% planning to, and 38% of respondents not planning to use AI agents. However, for those developers who have used AI agents at work, 69% agree they have experienced an increase in productivity.
• Despite headlines that imply otherwise, the majority of developers (64%) still do not perceive AI as a threat to their jobs. However, this is a slight decrease from 68% in 2024.
• Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio still rank as the top IDEs used by developers; however, usage is growing for new AI-enabled IDEs added this year including Cursor (18%), Claude Code (10%), and Windsurf (5%).
• LLM models used by most developers are OpenAI's GPT models (81%), Claude Sonnet models (43%), and Gemini Flash models (35%).

"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. "With the use of AI now ubiquitous and 'AI slop' rapidly replacing the content we see online, an approach that leans heavily on trustworthy, responsible use of data from curated knowledge bases is critical. By providing a trusted human intelligence layer in the age of AI, we believe the tech enthusiasts of today can play a larger role in adding value to build the AI technologies and products of tomorrow."