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JetBrains asked 15,000 developers how much code agents write. The answers add up to 112 percent
The average professional reports 47 percent of last month's code fully agent-generated, 38 percent assisted and 27 percent manual. Only 22 percent live above the 80 percent line.
The Engineer · Build desk
What happened
- JetBrains asked more than 15,000 professional developers, between May and July 2026, what share of last month's work code was agent-generated, AI-assisted or fully manual.
- The averages came back at about 47 percent fully agent-written, 38 percent written with assistance and 27 percent written by hand.
- Only around 22 percent of respondents are above 80 percent agent-generated code, with most sitting in the middle of the range.
Why it matters
- contradiction Because the three self-reported shares total 112 percent, the 47 percent headline cannot be treated as a clean fraction of a codebase, and anyone benchmarking against it is comparing to...
- constraint A blanket agentic mandate will not land evenly: C and C++ teams still hand-write 38 percent of their code, so the same target reads as slack in one group and pressure in another.
- decision Tool procurement cannot lean on these usage gaps, since JetBrains attributes Codex's heavier users to quota economics rather than to the agent producing more code.
- exposure Review capacity is thinnest where it is most needed: the seniors expected to check agent output are the group furthest into delegating to it.
Add the three averages together and you get 112 percent of a month's output [16]. The survey put fully agent-generated, AI-assisted and fully manual code as three separate questions, answered in bands running 0 percent, 1-20 percent and upward to 100 percent [1][2]. Code a developer counts twice, once as agent output and again as assisted because they went back and edited it, lands in that 12 points of overshoot. So 47 percent is not a measured share of a repository. It is the midpoint of a self-reported band, and the bands do not tile.
The heavy end can be counted two ways, and JetBrains counted it both. Draw a line at 80 percent agent-generated code and 22 percent of respondents sit above it [8]. Cluster developers by behaviour instead and the agentic coder segment comes out at 31 percent, averaging 84 percent agent-written code [4]. That is a 9-point spread between two defensible readings of one dataset [19], which is roughly the size of most of the differences the release goes on to report.
Tool comparisons carry a selection problem that JetBrains names itself. Among developers whose most-used tool is Claude Code, 32 percent are above the 80 percent line; among Codex users it is 42 percent, and 37 percent of Codex users say they write no code at all without AI [9][10]. Cursor users average 58 percent agent-generated, 11 points above the overall figure [11][17]. JetBrains' own interpretation is that Codex has historically offered higher quotas and so draws advanced users looking for value, while Claude Code, at 39 percent adoption at work, has grown a mainstream audience [22][9]. On that reading the 10-point gap between Codex and Claude Code [18] is a fact about who quota pricing recruits, not about which agent writes more code.
The stack numbers behave more like a constraint than a preference. Go, JavaScript and TypeScript developers average 54 to 55 percent agent-generated code, seven to eight points above the overall average [12][20], while C and C++ developers still write 38 percent of theirs by hand [13]. Java and Python fall between [14]. Seniority runs against the usual assumption: about a quarter of senior developers are above the 80 percent line, ahead of juniors, who lean toward assistance rather than handing the work over [3].
The widest single split is geographic. Between 32 and 35 percent of developers in China, Japan and South Korea are above the 80 percent line, against about 16 percent in Europe and the UK [15]. So the fully agentic workflow is real, and it is roughly one respondent in five [8]. A plan that treats it as next quarter's baseline is extrapolating from the tail of a distribution whose own totals overrun by 12 points [16].
What to watch
- Whether JetBrains publishes the methodology notes showing how bucketed ranges became averages, which would settle whether the 12-point overshoot is rounding or double-counted work.
- Any telemetry-based measure from IDEs or repositories placed alongside these self-reports, and how far apart the two land.
- Whether the Codex lead on heavy agent use survives the next round of quota changes, which is the test of JetBrains' selection explanation.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence52
- Adoption68
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives62
- Confidence55
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
JetBrains' Developer Ecosystem Survey 2026 asked over 15,000 professional developers worldwide, in May-July 2026, what percentage of the code they produced last month for work was fully generated by AI agents, written by them with some AI assistance, or fully written by them without any AI assistance. JetBrains describes the survey as large-scale and globally representative.
- [2]
The answer options for each of the three categories were 0%, 1%-20%, 21%-40%, and so on through 81%-99%, 100%, and 'I don't know'.
- [3]
About a quarter of senior developers generate over 80% of their code using agents, compared with a smaller fraction of juniors, who lean more toward AI-assisted workflows than fully agentic coding.
- [4]
JetBrains identified three profiles, agentic coders, AI-assisted coders and manual coders; agentic coders are about 31% of developers, and on average 84% of their code is fully agent-generated with about 15% written with some assistance.
- [5]
JetBrains framed the study around a claim it says developers have heard many times this year: that 100% of a given developer's code is written by whichever AI coding agent is currently popular.
- [6]
Over half of all developers now write less than 20% of their code manually.
- [7]
One in five developers writes literally zero code without AI help.
- [8]
The group relying almost entirely on coding agents, with over 80% agent-generated code, remains a minority of around 22%; most developers sit somewhere in the middle.
- [9]
About 32% of developers who report Claude Code as their most-used AI coding tool generate over 80% of their code with agents; JetBrains calls Claude Code the de facto standard, with 39% adoption at work.
- [10]
Among developers using Codex, 42% generate over 80% of their code with agents, and 37% of Codex users report writing no code at all without AI assistance, higher than among users of other AI coding tools.
- [11]
Cursor users average 58% agent-generated code, and for 28% of Cursor users agents generate over 80% of their code.
- [12]
Developers whose main languages are Go, JavaScript and TypeScript report the highest shares of agent-generated code, averaging 54%-55%.
- [13]
C and C++ developers remain the least agentic, keeping a much higher proportion of manually written code, 38% on average.
- [14]
Java and Python developers sit in the middle, at 48%-51% agent-generated code.
- [15]
About 32%-35% of developers in East Asia, particularly China, Japan and South Korea, generate over 80% of their code with agents, roughly twice the share of around 16% in Europe and the UK.
- [16]
The three reported averages sum to 112% of a month's code, an overshoot of 12 percentage points over a complete accounting.
- [17]
Cursor users' 58% average agent-generated share is 11 percentage points above the 47% overall average.
- [18]
The share of users above the 80% agent-generated line is 10 percentage points higher for Codex than for Claude Code.
- [19]
Counting the heavy end by an 80% threshold gives 22% of developers; counting it by behavioural segment gives 31%, a 9-percentage-point spread.
- [20]
The Go, JavaScript and TypeScript average of 54%-55% is 7 to 8 percentage points above the overall 47% average.
- [21]
On average, professional developers report that ~47% of their code is fully written by agents, ~38% is written with some AI assistance, and ~27% is written fully manually.
- [22]
JetBrains' interpretation is that Claude Code's audience no longer consists predominantly of advanced agent users, while Codex is catching up on awareness and adoption and its user base may contain more advanced users seeking better value for money, as Codex has historically offered higher quotas.
Sources
1 independent publisher whose own reporting we read for this story.
- blog.jetbrains.comHow Much Code Do Developers Really Let Agents Write?
1 article · August 26, 2026
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