Stack Overflow’s traffic and question volume have seen a dramatic decline since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. Here’s a summary of the key trends:
- Question Volume Collapse: Monthly question volume on Stack Overflow has fallen from peaks exceeding 200,000 in 2014 to under 50,000 by late 2025, returning to levels not seen since the platform’s launch in 2008. The decline accelerated sharply after 2022, with a 64% drop in questions and answers from April 2024 to April 2025, and a 90% plunge compared to April 2020 peaks.
- Traffic Trends: As of December 2025, Stack Overflow still receives significant traffic (55.15 million visits), but the growth rate is negative, with a slight decline in monthly visits and pages per visit.
- AI Impact: The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT (with 81.4% adoption among developers by 2024) is widely cited as the primary driver of this decline. Developers are increasingly turning to AI for quick answers rather than posting or searching for questions on Stack Overflow.
- Revenue vs. Traffic: Despite the traffic drop, Stack Overflow’s revenue has grown, suggesting a shift in business model or monetization strategy.
In summary, while Stack Overflow remains a major resource, its role and traffic have fundamentally changed since the AI boom. Would you like more details on any specific aspect?
Here’s a comparison of Stack Overflow’s traffic and activity now versus before ChatGPT — based on available analyses and reported metrics:
📉 Activity & Traffic Trends
Before ChatGPT (pre-Nov 2022):
- Stack Overflow was one of the primary places developers turned to for coding help.
- At its peak around 2014–2020, more than 150 k–200 k questions per month were posted. (abit.ee)
- Traffic (visits) was strong: tens of millions of developers used the site regularly, and it ranked high among programming websites. (Similarweb)
After ChatGPT (post-Nov 2022):
- Huge decline in new questions: one analysis estimates monthly questions dropped from ~108 k in late 2022 to ~25 k by December 2024 — a ~76 % collapse in volume. (byteiota | From Bits to Bytes)
- Other reporting suggests activity has fallen back to levels similar to 2009 (the year Stack Overflow launched). (WebProNews)
- In late 2025, some months had fewer than 4 000 new questions, versus ~200 k at the peak. (abit.ee)
- Monthly posts and weekly activity declined sharply after ChatGPT’s release compared with earlier trends; studies estimate about a 15 – 25 % drop in weekly posts attributable to ChatGPT’s introduction. (PMC)
📊 Engagement Beyond Questions
- Upvotes, comments, and other interaction metrics have also fallen significantly (e.g., activity in popular tags such as Python down by ~90 % from past peaks). (Meta Stack Exchange)
📉 Traffic Visits
- According to SimilarWeb data, overall traffic had been declining year-over-year even before ChatGPT (about 6 % monthly on average since early 2022), but the drop accelerated after ChatGPT’s launch. (Similarweb)
- By comparison, ChatGPT’s own web traffic surged into the hundreds of millions to billions of visits monthly shortly after release, surpassing many long-standing web properties. (Similarweb)
🤖 Why the Shift Happened
Most analysts attribute the change to a mix of factors, with ChatGPT & AI tools playing a big role:
- Developers increasingly use AI assistants like ChatGPT and CoPilot for fast, conversational problem-solving instead of searching and posting on Stack Overflow. (WebProNews)
- AI tools reduce the need to ask human communities for many common programming questions.
- Declines in traffic started before ChatGPT (moderation policies and community changes contributed), but the rate of decline accelerated after AI adoption increased. (WebProNews)
🧠 In summary
| Metric | Before ChatGPT | After ChatGPT |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly questions | ~150 k – 200 k (peak) | ~<30 k; some months ~4 k |
| Posting activity | Relatively stable | Sharp decline (~15–90% drop) |
| Visitor traffic | High & growing | Lower, declining YOY |
| Role in dev workflow | Primary resource | Often fallback after AI tools |
Conclusion:
Stack Overflow’s traffic and activity have declined significantly compared to before ChatGPT, both in terms of contributions (questions and answers) and overall engagement. While some decline began prior to AI tools, the advent of ChatGPT and similar assistants accelerated the shift, with many developers turning to AI for instant solutions rather than posting or searching on Stack Overflow. (WebProNews)
If you’d like, I can also share a concise timeline or a graph-style summary of how traffic and posts changed year by year.
Random stuff and articles, funny things so on 