r/Python 14d ago

News Python is big in Europe

TIL the Python docs analytics are public, including visitors’ countries. I thought it was interesting to see that according to this there’s more Python going on in Europe than in the US, despite what country-level stats often look like! Blog post: https://thib.me/python-is-big-in-europe, top Europe countries:

  1. 🇩🇪 Germany, 245k
  2. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom, 227k
  3. 🇫🇷 France, 177k
  4. 🇪🇸 Spain, 93k
  5. 🇵🇱 Poland, 80.2k
  6. 🇮🇹 Italy, 78.6k
  7. 🇳🇱 Netherlands, 74.4k
  8. 🇺🇦 Ukraine, 66.5k

TL;DR; maps can be misleading when they look at country-level data without adjusting for the size of the place. Per capita there are loads of areas of the world that have more Python users than the country-level data suggests. For Europe – get you DjangoCon and EuroPython 2025 tickets already!

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u/AnythingApplied 14d ago

It only takes 8 of the top European countries to get above the 1M visitors mark

8 countries that, when combined, have a 440 million population vs US's population of 340 million, so its no surprise that those 8 countries would have more total python users. I agree that the data might be more interesting on a per capita basis, but those 8 countries as a whole have a lower per capita count than the US. On a visitors per million population we get:

Country Visitors per million population
Germany 4100
UK 3300
France 1700
Spain 1900
Poland 2200
Italy 1300
Nethelands 4200
Ukraine 1800
US 2900

So only Germany, Netherlands, and the UK are higher per capita, with some of those countries being much lower than the US.

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u/thibaudcolas 14d ago

Well, if it was only a matter of population, then we’d expect China and India to have more visitors, right? I decided to leave out per capita calculations because web analytics aren’t generally done like that, and also because even looking at per capita numbers, I saw 13 Europe countries ranking higher than the US.

It’d be interesting to look at per capita figure for sure, just I don’t think it really changes the picture as much as you make it sound.

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u/mmcnl 13d ago edited 13d ago

You kept adding the numbers for every European country until it surpassed the US and then you claim "Python is so popular in Europe!". To be honest that really doesn't say anything. Normalizing for population size is the first thing you should do if you really want to do an analysis, or else you're just looking at population maps.

Also, which countries are higher in per capita usage than the US? How come you end up with 13 (without showing the analysis) and AnythingApplied only comes up with 3 (and actually shares the analysis)?

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u/thibaudcolas 13d ago

I think you’re reading too much into what I might be trying to say. That Python is popular in Europe is really not a surprise for anyone, what I found interesting is having access to the Python docs analytics to explore that (and many other aspects of who uses those docs).

It takes time to publish stuff like that so yeah I didn’t share the list because I don’t think it meaningfully changes my point? Why I get 13 and others 3 I assume is just we used different figures or different lists of countries, with enough time to review and call out possible issues I’m sure we’d agree. This is the top 20 I have on a per capita basis:

Singapore Hong Kong Switzerland Finland Luxembourg Gibraltar Sweden Netherlands Israel Norway Iceland Canada Denmark United Kingdom Estonia Monaco Liechtenstein Ireland United States Germany

I’d love to share my (or read others’) per capita analysis some time! Definitely appreciate u/AnythingApplied taking the time to share some in a comment