India Surpasses US as World’s Largest Base of Open Source Contributors: GitHub Octoverse 2025

India has officially become the world’s largest base of open-source contributors, overtaking the United States for the first time, according to GitHub’s Octoverse 2025 report.

The milestone shows how quickly India is becoming a global leader in coding. In 2025 alone, over 5 million Indian developers joined GitHub, accounting for more than 14% of all new accounts worldwide. The country now leads in the total number of contributors to public and open-source repositories on the platform.

The report said that India’s developer ecosystem has expanded at an unprecedented pace, with the country’s contributor growth more than quadrupling since 2020. 

“India added more than 5.2M developers in 2025, which accounts for a little over 14% of GitHub’s total +36M new developers in 2025. That makes India the single largest source of new developers on GitHub this year, continuing its rapid rise since 2020,” the report said.

GitHub projects that by 2030, India will have over 57 million developers, accounting for one in every three new developers globally.

While India leads in headcount, the United States still tops the charts in total contribution volume, suggesting higher per-developer activity. Brazil, Indonesia, and Germany have also emerged as major open-source hubs, reflecting a wider shift in global software development away from traditional centres in North America and Europe.

The report attributes India’s surge to expanding internet access, AI-assisted coding tools, and government-backed skilling initiatives. With 80% of new developers using GitHub Copilot in their first week, AI is becoming a standard part of the country’s programming culture.