Python continues to soar in the Tiobe index of programming language popularity, rising to a 25.35% share in May 2025. It’s the highest Tiobe rating for any language since 2001, when Java topped the chart.
Python’s popularity increased roughly 2.2 percentage points in the past month; the language had a rating of 23.08% in April. Python also racked up the largest lead a language has ever had, running 15 percentage points ahead of the second most popular language, C++, which has a 9.94% rating. “The only reason other languages still have a reason for existing is because of Python’s low performance, and the fact that it is interpreted and thus prone to unexpected run-time errors,” said Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen, who had noted Python’s “serious drawbacks” previously. “This means that safety-critical and/or real-time systems still have to rely on other languages, but in most other domains Python is slowly but surely finding its way to the top.”
Python’s top ranking today carries more weight than Java’s almost 24 years ago, Jansen noted. In June 2001, Java’s rating was 26.49% and in October 2001 it was 25.68%. But Tiobe only tracked 20 different programming languages back then, versus 282 languages today. ”Hence, it was easier to get such a high score in 2001,” Jansen said.
