Developer density by UK city.
Which UK cities have the most developers per head?
There are 26.2 developers on GitHub per 10,000 people in the UK (181,672 developers).
Sample: 181,672 developers · source: public GitHub profiles · data to 24 September 2026
By city
| City | Figure | Sample (developers) | In words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cambridge | 194.2 per 10k | 2,911 | Cambridge has 194.2 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (2,911 developers, 1.6% of the UK total). |
| Oxford | 147.5 per 10k | 2,447 | Oxford has 147.5 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (2,447 developers, 1.3% of the UK total). |
| Edinburgh | 88.3 per 10k | 4,690 | Edinburgh has 88.3 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (4,690 developers, 2.6% of the UK total). |
| London | 74.5 per 10k | 67,754 | London has 74.5 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (67,754 developers, 37.3% of the UK total). |
| Bristol | 68.2 per 10k | 3,378 | Bristol has 68.2 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (3,378 developers, 1.9% of the UK total). |
| Glasgow | 47.7 per 10k | 3,120 | Glasgow has 47.7 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (3,120 developers, 1.7% of the UK total). |
| Brighton and Hove | 46.7 per 10k | 1,327 | Brighton and Hove has 46.7 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (1,327 developers, 0.7% of the UK total). |
| Belfast | 42.6 per 10k | 1,501 | Belfast has 42.6 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (1,501 developers, 0.8% of the UK total). |
| Reading | 41.5 per 10k | 763 | Reading has 41.5 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (763 developers, 0.4% of the UK total). |
| Norwich | 40 per 10k | 582 | Norwich has 40 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (582 developers, 0.3% of the UK total). |
| Nottingham | 39.6 per 10k | 1,289 | Nottingham has 39.6 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (1,289 developers, 0.7% of the UK total). |
| Exeter | 39.4 per 10k | 543 | Exeter has 39.4 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (543 developers, 0.3% of the UK total). |
| Southampton | 32.9 per 10k | 854 | Southampton has 32.9 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (854 developers, 0.5% of the UK total). |
| York | 30.7 per 10k | 641 | York has 30.7 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (641 developers, 0.4% of the UK total). |
| Cardiff | 29.3 per 10k | 1,118 | Cardiff has 29.3 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (1,118 developers, 0.6% of the UK total). |
| Bath | 28 per 10k | 563 | Bath has 28 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (563 developers, 0.3% of the UK total). |
| Dundee | 24 per 10k | 356 | Dundee has 24 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (356 developers, 0.2% of the UK total). |
| Greater Manchester | 21.7 per 10k | 6,556 | Greater Manchester has 21.7 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (6,556 developers, 3.6% of the UK total). |
| Guildford | 21 per 10k | 320 | Guildford has 21 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (320 developers, 0.2% of the UK total). |
| Aberdeen | 19.6 per 10k | 451 | Aberdeen has 19.6 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (451 developers, 0.2% of the UK total). |
| Leicester | 16.5 per 10k | 632 | Leicester has 16.5 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (632 developers, 0.3% of the UK total). |
| Tyne and Wear | 13.1 per 10k | 1,543 | Tyne and Wear has 13.1 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (1,543 developers, 0.8% of the UK total). |
| Milton Keynes | 12.6 per 10k | 390 | Milton Keynes has 12.6 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (390 developers, 0.2% of the UK total). |
| Swansea | 12.5 per 10k | 313 | Swansea has 12.5 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (313 developers, 0.2% of the UK total). |
| South Yorkshire | 12.3 per 10k | 1,761 | South Yorkshire has 12.3 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (1,761 developers, 1% of the UK total). |
| Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole | 12 per 10k | 485 | Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has 12 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (485 developers, 0.3% of the UK total). |
| West Yorkshire | 11.7 per 10k | 2,826 | West Yorkshire has 11.7 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (2,826 developers, 1.6% of the UK total). |
| Plymouth | 11.6 per 10k | 316 | Plymouth has 11.6 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (316 developers, 0.2% of the UK total). |
| Liverpool City Region | 9.2 per 10k | 1,476 | Liverpool City Region has 9.2 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (1,476 developers, 0.8% of the UK total). |
| West Midlands | 7.9 per 10k | 2,377 | West Midlands has 7.9 developers on GitHub per 10,000 residents (2,377 developers, 1.3% of the UK total). |
How this is measured
Developers whose location names a town in the area, per 10,000 residents. One kind of area each: a standalone city is its council area with its own sub-areas (Brighton and Hove; Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; London is Greater London, including people who give a borough or district such as Croydon or Hackney); a conurbation is its whole metropolitan county or combined authority (Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region, Tyne and Wear, South Yorkshire), counting its main towns, because most of its developers just give the core city. Populations: ONS / NRS mid-2025 local authority estimates (metros sum their councils; Belfast is NISRA 2024). Bare names shared with a larger place abroad (Cambridge, Birmingham) count only with a UK marker ("Cambridge, UK"), so those are floors; people in villages around a small city who give the city name are counted in it, which lifts small cities' rates. value_json: developers, population, population_source, share_of_uk_pct. Overall: all UK developers per 10,000 UK residents (ONS mid-2024, 69.3m). Source: public GitHub profiles and their public repositories (the teky search dataset; each finding's date is the date the data runs to). Population: GitHub accounts whose stated location we confirm as the UK or mainland China — the geocoder's country is re-checked against the location text (DevLocation), which drops "Cambridge, MA", "Stanford, CA", "Birmingham, AL" and "Philadelphia, PA"-style mis-codes and bare town names shared with a larger place abroad, and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan; organisation accounts and profiles with no GitHub account are excluded. It describes developers who publish on GitHub and state where they are, not every developer: it leans towards open-source contributors, academics and students, and Chinese developers also use Gitee, so China is under-represented. n = developers (GitHub accounts) unless the insight says otherwise.
Cite this
Free to quote with a credit and a link.
ProdReady Recruitment (2026). Developer density by UK city. Data to 24 September 2026. https://ProdReadyRecruitment.com/research/dev_city_density
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