02 / TOOLS
The competitive landscape
ChatGPT and Copilot dominate broad usage. But tool choice diverges sharply by context — survey audience, company size, and whether you're asking about assistive or agentic use.
Tool Usage — Agent Users
Stack Overflow 2025 (among those who use/develop agents, n≈8,323)
Tool Usage — Regular Agent Users
Pragmatic Engineer 2026 survey (n=906, high-bias audience)
Small, self-selected sample of experienced engineers (median 11–15 yrs). Treat as signal of practitioner preference, not population-level share.
Hard Metrics — What We Can Verify
Vendor disclosures, earnings calls, and independently reported figures
| Tool | Verified Metric | Source | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | 4.7M paid subscribers | Microsoft FY26 Q2 (Jan 2026) | Separate "20M users" figure may include free/trial |
| GitHub Copilot | 90% of Fortune 100 | Microsoft FY25 Q4 | Enterprise presence ≠ intensity |
| Cursor | $2B ARR, raising at $50B | Bloomberg / TechCrunch (Mar 2026) | $500M (May 2025) → $1B (Oct) → $2B (Feb 2026). Enterprise ~60% of revenue |
| Claude Code | ~$1B ARR (est. Nov 2025) | Industry estimates | Estimated; not independently disclosed by Anthropic |
| Windsurf | $82M ARR, 350+ enterprise clients | Reuters (Jul 2025) | At time of failed OpenAI acquisition ($3B); now licensed to Google ($2.4B) |
| Replit | $10M → $100M ARR in 6 months | Replit blog (2025) | Driven by Replit Agent (Sep 2024); 45% monthly subscriber growth |
| Tabnine | 1M+ users (vendor claim) | Tabnine "About" page | Free tier sunset Apr 2025; enterprise-only pivot |