Why Java 17 Adoption Soared 430% in One Year – 2023 Ecosystem Insights
The 2023 New Relic Java ecosystem report reveals that Java 17 usage jumped over 430% in a single year, Java 11 remains dominant, Amazon Corretto now leads JDK market share, containerized deployments hit 70%, and the G1 garbage collector stays the top choice among Java 11+ users.
2023 Java Ecosystem Report Overview
New Relic released the "2023 State of the Java Ecosystem" report, analyzing data from millions of applications to show the most used Java versions, popular JDK vendors, and the rise of containerized deployments.
Java 17 Adoption Surges 430%
Java LTS releases appear every 2‑3 years. Java 11, released in September 2018, remains the most popular LTS version, used by over 56% of production applications (up from 48% in 2022 and 11% in 2020). Java 8 follows with about 33% usage, down from 46% in 2022.
Java 17, released in September 2021, has seen rapid growth, now powering more than 9% of applications (less than 1% in 2022), representing a 430% increase within a year—far outpacing the gradual rise of Java 11.
Support for Java 7 ended in 2022; only 0.28% of applications still run on it, mostly legacy systems.
Non‑LTS Versions Remain Marginal
Non‑LTS releases, supported for only six months, have low adoption: just 1.6% of applications use a non‑LTS version, down from 2.7% in 2022. Java 14 (released January 2020) is the most popular non‑LTS version at 0.57% usage, followed by Java 15 at 0.44%.
Lack of long‑term support
Perceived feature attractiveness
Time until the next LTS release
Amazon Becomes the Leading JDK Vendor
In 2020, Oracle dominated the JDK market with about 75% share. By 2022 its share fell to 34% and further to 28% in 2023, largely due to restrictive licensing on Java 11. Amazon Corretto’s share grew dramatically to 31% (from 2.18% in 2020 and 22% in 2022), making Amazon the top JDK provider.
Other Key Findings
Containerized applications are now mainstream: 70% of the surveyed Java apps run in containers.
The Garbage‑First (G1) collector remains the preferred GC for Java 11+ users, with a 65% adoption rate.
Experimental collectors such as ZGC and Shenandoah are still rarely used in production despite being ready.
For the full report, visit: https://newrelic.com/resources/report/2023-state-of-the-java-ecosystem
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Programmer DD
A tinkering programmer and author of "Spring Cloud Microservices in Action"
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