2023 State of the Java Ecosystem: Adoption Trends and JDK Vendor Share

New Relic recently released the "2023 State of the Java Ecosystem" report, providing background and insights into the current state of the Java ecosystem.

The report is based on data collected from millions of applications that provide performance data, analyzing the most used versions in production, the most popular JDK vendors, the rise of containers, and more.

Java 17 user adoption grew 430% within a year

Java releases a long‑term support (LTS) version every two to three years. The most popular version is Java 11, released in September 2018, used by over 56% of production applications, up from 48% in 2022 and 11% in 2020.

Java 8, released in 2014, follows with about 33% usage, down from 46% in 2022.

Although Java 11 has held the top spot for two consecutive years, Java 17 (released September 2021) has seen adoption grow far faster than Java 11 did at launch. Over 9% of applications now run Java 17, up from less than 1% in 2022, representing a 430% increase in one year. By contrast, Java 11 took several years to reach a similar growth rate.

Support for Java 7 (LTS released July 2011) ended in 2022; only 0.28% of applications still use it, mostly legacy systems.

Java 14 is the most popular non‑LTS version

Non‑LTS versions have very low usage, with only 1.6% of applications using any non‑LTS release, down from 2.7% in 2022.

Among them, Java 14 (released January 2020) remains the most popular non‑LTS version at 0.57% usage, lower than 0.95% in 2022. Java 15 follows at 0.44%.

Lack of support

Perceived feature attractiveness

Time until the next LTS release

Amazon is now the most popular JDK vendor

In 2020, Oracle was the dominant JDK vendor with about 75% market share.

By 2022, Oracle’s share fell to 34% and further to 28% in 2023, largely due to restrictive licensing for Java 11. Oracle’s stance on Java 17 has become more open.

Meanwhile, Amazon Corretto’s usage surged to become the most used JDK, reaching a 31% market share (2.18% in 2020, 22% in 2022).

Other notable findings

Containerized applications are mainstream – 70% of reported Java apps run in containers.

The Garbage‑First (G1) collector remains the favorite for Java 11+ users with a 65% usage rate; newer experimental collectors (ZGC and Shenandoah) see limited production use.

For full details, see the complete report at https://newrelic.com/resources/report/2023-state-of-the-java-ecosystem .