Why Java 11 Dominates Production: Insights from the 2021 JVM Ecosystem Report

JVM Ecosystem Report 2021 Overview

The recent Snyk JVM Ecosystem Report 2021 reveals that Java 8, once the dominant version, is being overtaken by newer releases, with Java 11 now the most widely used version in production.

Survey Methodology

The survey was conducted over six weeks in February and March 2021, gathering responses from more than 2,000 Java developers worldwide.

AdoptOpenJDK and Oracle Market Share

44.1% of respondents use the free AdoptOpenJDK distribution in production. Oracle remains a significant player, with its OpenJDK builds accounting for 28% and commercial Oracle JDK for 23% of the market.

Java Version Adoption

61.5% of developers run Java 11 in production.

Nearly 12% use the latest version available during the survey period, Java 15.

40% of participants use more than one Java version in production.

Half of Java 11 users still retain Java 8 in their production stack.

IDE and Tool Preferences

IntelliJ IDEA remains the primary IDE for JVM developers, with over 70% adoption. Visual Studio Code and Apache NetBeans have also seen substantial growth, and more than half of the JVM community reports using multiple IDEs.

Maven continues to dominate as the leading build system, used by over 76% of developers, while Gradle holds the second spot with a 38.1% share.

Framework Dominance

Spring remains the cornerstone of the Java ecosystem. Over half of the market uses Spring Boot, and nearly one‑third rely on Spring MVC. The report notes that the Java community is heavily centered around Spring.

Language usage shows Java still dominates with over 90% of developers, followed by Kotlin at 17.7%.

Full report URL: https://snyk.io/jvm-ecosystem-report-2021/