---
title: "Count of tools used — Work data 2026"
url: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2026/work/data/tool-count
year: 2026
chapter: "work"
question: "ToolCount"
section: "Employer + technology details"
licence: "ODbL 1.0 (https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/)"
---

# Count of tools used

35% report 10+ tools, and 8% report 20+ tools.

Asked as: In a typical month over the past year, about how many distinct software tools, platforms, or services did you personally use to do your primary work?

Count tools you intentionally opened, configured, or relied on to create, analyze, manage, build, deploy, support, or share work. These may be free, purchased, internal, or open-source tools.

Do not count general operating systems, web browsers, programming languages, libraries/packages, one-off scripts or commands, or multiple interchangeable utilities that serve the same narrow purpose. (`ToolCount`, free text, optional, v2026.1)

## Results

### All Respondents

n = 14,836

|  | Respondents | Percent |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| 5 | 2,550 | 17.2% |
| 10 | 2,389 | 16.1% |
| 3 | 1,427 | 9.6% |
| 4 | 1,263 | 8.5% |
| 6 | 1,135 | 7.7% |
| 8 | 910 | 6.1% |
| 7 | 775 | 5.2% |
| 20 | 708 | 4.8% |
| 2 | 687 | 4.6% |
| 15 | 646 | 4.4% |
| 12 | 501 | 3.4% |
| 1 | 275 | 1.9% |
| 9 | 265 | 1.8% |
| 30 | 191 | 1.3% |
| 0 | 153 | 1.0% |
| 25 | 135 | 0.9% |
| 11 | 114 | 0.8% |
| 50 | 89 | 0.6% |
| 13 | 85 | 0.6% |
| 14 | 77 | 0.5% |
| 16 | 58 | 0.4% |
| 40 | 42 | 0.3% |
| 100 | 41 | 0.3% |
| 17 | 35 | 0.2% |
| 18 | 35 | 0.2% |

In context: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2026/work/data.md