Is the AI coding assistant market growing or shrinking?
Miles FosterOwner and tester, RankDude
The answer■ Neitherbut visits are up 36% over the last six months
- Visits, year on year, without OpenAI Codex
- -0.2%
- Visits, last six months
- +36%
- Name searches vs October 2025
- -15%
Every month I add up the Google visits to the 21 AI coding assistant sites I track (DataForSEO estimates) and how often people in the US search for them by name (Google Ads). In October 2026 they got about 253 million visits. Much of the year’s change is one site, OpenAI Codex; without it, visits are about level on a year ago.
The total hides very different stories: one site grew 6037% in a year while another lost 79% of its visits. See who grew and who shrank, the visits month by month and the name searches, plus what I expect for November 2026.
AI coding assistant market demand: key numbers, October 2026
Four numbers for October 2026. Visits mean visits from Google search to the 21 tracked sites. Tap one for the detail below.
- Visits from Google253Mvisits+49% vs a year ago
- Name searches, US1.5Msearches-15% vs October 2025
- Top five sites99.8%of visitsfastest grower: OpenCode
- Expected in November257Mvisitslikely 225M to 290M
- The AI coding assistant market is neither growing nor shrinking as of October 2026, but visits are up 36% over the last six months.
- The 21 AI coding assistant sites RankDude tracks got 253,405,410 visits from Google search in October 2026, 49% more visits than in October 2025, or about the same without OpenAI Codex.
- People in the US searched Google for these sites by name 1,537,440 times in September 2026, 15% fewer searches than in October 2025.
- The five most-visited AI coding assistant sites get 99.8% of all visits.
- Fastest-growing AI coding assistant site over the year: OpenCode, +6037% (6.9K to 426K visits a month).
- Steepest fall over the year: Tabby, -79% (5.7K to 1.2K visits a month).
- Forecast for November 2026: about 257M visits, likely between 225M and 290M.
Source: DataForSEO visit estimates and Google Ads search data, published 2 November 2026 by RankDude.
1.Are more people visiting AI coding assistant sites than a year ago?
Up 49% on a year ago; up 5% on September 2026
Only because of OpenAI Codex. The 21 tracked AI coding assistant sites got 253,405,410 visits from Google search in October 2026. That is 49% more visits than in October 2025, or about the same without OpenAI Codex, and 5% more visits than in September 2026.
October 2026 is the highest month of the last two years. In the US, visits were 20,756,681, up 305% on a year ago.
WorldVisits a month to AI coding assistant sites, worldwide, two years
Source: DataForSEO, Google search visits, all tracked sites.
Worldwide, this month
253M
+49.0% on a year ago
United States, this month
21M
+305.0% on a year ago
Two-year high
253M
October 2026
US share of visits
8.2%
of worldwide visits
Miles explains
More visits than a year ago means new people are still finding AI coding assistant sites through Google. Most of that growth is one site, OpenAI Codex; without it, visits are about level on a year ago.
2.Are people searching for AI coding assistant sites by name?
Down 15% on October 2025; 1.5M name searches a month in the US
Fewer than before. People in the US searched Google for the names of the counted AI coding assistant sites 1,537,440 times in September 2026, 15% fewer searches than in October 2025. Someone who searches a site’s name already knows it, so this is the clearest sign of people coming back on purpose. The term “ai coding assistant” itself gets about 14,800 US searches a month (Google Ads, 12-month average).
USName searches a month for AI coding assistant sites, US
Source: Google Ads via DataForSEO, to September 2026.
USMost searched AI coding assistant sites by name, searches a month
OpenAI Codex1.0M a month
Claude Code301K a month
OpenCode165K a month
Windsurf40.5K a month
CodeRabbit22.2K a month
Sourcery3.6K a month
Miles explains
Name searches are down, so fewer people are coming back on purpose. Better Google rankings will not fix that.
3.Which AI coding assistant sites grew, and which shrank?
The five most-visited sites hold 99.8% of all visits; the ten most-visited hold 99.9%
The five most-visited AI coding assistant sites get 99.8% of all visits, so one of them winning or losing a big Google ranking moves the whole total. Fastest grower over the year: OpenCode, from 6,940 to 425,930 visits (+6037%). Steepest fall: Tabby, from 5,736 to 1,197 visits (-79%).
Growing fastest, year on year
- OpenCode426K visits+6037%
Kiro117K visits+258%
CodeGPT65.3K visits+89%- Claude Code3.7M visits+66%
Amp19.2K visits+52%
Falling fastest, year on year
Tabby1.2K visits-79%
Qodo24.9K visits-79%
Aider13.9K visits-78%- Windsurf52.8K visits-77%
JetBrains AI Assistant912K visits-61%
Source: DataForSEO. Sites with 5,000+ visits a year ago.