A Hacker News submission titled "StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month" links to a query on the Stack Exchange Data Explorer, the site's public database tool. The thread had 341 comments at the time of writing. Two outlets have published month-by-month counts from Stack Overflow's data in recent months, and they do not agree on the 2026 figures. Here is what each reports.
What the two reports say
PPC Land, in a piece by Luis Rijo dated 8 August 2026, reports that Stack Overflow recorded 1,442 new questions in July 2026, citing results from the Stack Exchange Data Explorer. It puts the highest month, March 2014, at 207,204 questions and says July 2026 is 99.3% below that. It says developer Daniel Lockyer published the comparison on X on 7 August 2026, writing: "Stack Overflow has gone from a peak of 207k questions in march 2014, down to 1.4k in july 2026".
WitsCode, in a piece by Sudhakaran last updated 25 September 2026, says it queried the Stack Exchange API directly on 21 September 2026. It reports 1,125 new questions in August 2026, which it calls the lowest full month in the site's history outside the 2008 private beta. It puts the March 2014 peak at 207,172.
The two agree on the direction and on the scale: a fall of more than 99% from the 2014 peak. They differ on the detail.
| PPC Land (8 Aug 2026) | WitsCode (25 September 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| March 2014 peak | 207,204 | 207,172 |
| May 2026 | 1,229 | 2,076 |
| June 2026 | 1,076 | 1,730 |
| July 2026 | 1,442 | 1,185 |
| August 2026 | 40 (partial month) | 1,125 |
| Lowest full month named | June 2026 | August 2026 |
PPC Land describes July as a 34% rise on June, the first sizeable month-on-month rise since September 2025. WitsCode describes March to August 2026 as "a straight decline rather than a dip and recovery". It also says that several outlets cited June 2026's 1,076 as the low point, but that the API shows June at 1,730.
The annual totals also differ slightly between the two. For 2025, PPC Land gives 108,981 questions and WitsCode gives 109,763. For 2016, PPC Land gives 2,183,926 and WitsCode gives 2,183,175.
PPC Land adds a caveat about the Data Explorer's counts. It says deleted questions are not present in the data. In its words, the true peak-to-trough decline is likely steeper than 99.3%, not shallower.
The headline figure
The Hacker News title says fewer than 1,000 a month. The WitsCode and PPC Land pieces each name a lowest full month above 1,000: 1,125 for August in WitsCode, 1,076 for June in PPC Land. PPC Land's partial August figure of 40 was recorded at the point its query was run, so it is not a full month. Neither report gives a count for September or October 2026.
Why the decline happened is argued over
PPC Land notes that the Wikipedia entry on Stack Overflow attributes the decline to two causes: a perceived hostile moderation culture, and competition from generative AI tools. WitsCode writes that the decline began years before ChatGPT and that "AI accelerated it rather than starting it". It also says that ChatGPT launched publicly on 30 November 2022, and that Stack Overflow logged 109,076 questions that month, which it calls the site's last normal month.
The Hacker News thread splits along the same lines. Commenter kstrauser wrote: "SO had been flatlined since 2014 and declining since 2017." Another commenter, p-e-w, wrote: "But this unprecedented drop in activity is 100% because of AI." These are commenters' opinions, not findings.
What the counts do and do not measure
PPC Land stresses that the series counts new question submissions only. It says this tells you nothing about read traffic, which has historically been the larger part of how the site is used, or about the roughly 24 million questions and 36 million answers it says the site has accumulated. WitsCode presents its count as exact, writing that the Stack Exchange API "returns the exact number of new questions asked on Stack Overflow, month by month".
PPC Land says that Stack Overflow and its owner Prosus had published no public statement on the July 2026 figure at the time of its piece on 8 August.
Any single month's count is only as good as the query behind it. For now, the safest reading is the one both pieces support: new questions on Stack Overflow have fallen by more than 99% from the 2014 peak. The exact 2026 monthly numbers depend on which report you read.
Sources
babelfish (2026) 'StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month', Hacker News, available at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50282454 (Accessed: 29 October 2026).
Rijo, L. (2026) 'Stack Overflow drops to 1,442 questions in July, down 99% from 2014 peak', PPC Land, 8 August 2026, available at: https://ppc.land/stack-overflow-drops-to-1-442-questions-in-july-down-99-from-2014-peak/ (Accessed: 29 October 2026).
Sudhakaran (2026) 'Nobody Reads the Documentation Anymore. Here Is What That Cost Three Companies.', WitsCode, 25 September 2026, available at: https://witscode.com/blogs/documentation-traffic-decline-what-it-cost (Accessed: 29 October 2026).
Picture credits
- Top picture: Jeff Atwood, who created Stack Overflow with Joel Spolsky. Image: Jeff Atwood (Codinghorror), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Joel Spolsky, who created Stack Overflow with Jeff Atwood. Photo: sigurd, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
