Stack Overflow questions per month: the 'fewer than 1,000' claim, what the data query counts, and what Stack Overflow says about AI

How many Stack Overflow questions per month get asked now? Fewer than 1,000: the official Stack Exchange API counts 969 questions created on Stack Overflow in September 2026 that were still on the site on October 29. On October 28, 2026, a Hacker News post had made the claim: "StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month." It linked to a public query on the Stack Exchange Data Explorer, a tool that lets anyone run SQL against the network's public data. That figure isn't an official Stack Overflow statistic, and how low a count looks depends on what it includes and when it was run. What isn't in doubt is the direction: Stack Overflow's own 2026 survey shows developers turning to AI first, a shift that matters for anyone building with coding agents. For how developers say they treat AI-written code, see our analysis of shipping AI code you don't understand, which draws on the same survey.

This analysis is based on the Hacker News posts and their linked queries (as listed by the HN Algolia API), Stack Overflow's 2026 Developer Survey, Stack Overflow blog posts on the Data Explorer from 2010 and 2016, Sherwood News's January 7, 2026 report, TechCrunch's May 6, 2024 report and Gergely Orosz's May 2025 analysis in The Pragmatic Engineer, checked October 29, 2026. The query page itself wasn't accessible when this story was checked, so its SQL and values aren't reproduced here. The monthly counts in this story come instead from the official Stack Exchange API, retrieved by 9to5AI on October 29, 2026.

The short version

• The claim: fewer than 1,000 Stack Overflow questions a month, per a community-written Data Explorer query (query 1926661) posted to Hacker News on October 28, 2026.
• What the official API shows: 969 questions in September 2026 and 963 from October 1 to the morning of October 29, against 47,571 in January 2024. The API counts questions still on the site, so deleted ones are left out.
• Not an official statistic: Stack Overflow hasn't published a monthly question count. The Hacker News figure is whatever that query returns from the public data.
• Why the latest month can look low: Stack Overflow said in 2016 that the Data Explorer is updated weekly, so a chart's final month is usually incomplete.
• What Stack Overflow says: its 2026 survey found 64.1% of respondents visit less for simple questions, and its CEO said in December 2025 that the declines were in simple questions.
• Earlier reports disagree on exact numbers. Sherwood News put December 2025 at 6,866 questions; a Hacker News commenter reading the same query in January put it at 3,862; the API now gives 4,162.

Where does the 'fewer than 1,000 questions a month' figure come from?

From a saved query on the Stack Exchange Data Explorer (data.stackexchange.com), linked in its graph view. The same query, number 1926661, reached the Hacker News front page before: on January 3, 2026, under the title "Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time," it drew 1,550 points and 999 comments, according to the HN Algolia API. On October 28 it was posted again with the new title and drew about 145 points and 158 comments.

The Data Explorer has a long history. Jeff Atwood introduced it on the Stack Overflow blog on June 13, 2010, as a way to query "the Creative Commons data from every website in the Stack Exchange network," the same public data the company released as data dumps. Anyone can write and save a query, which is why there are several competing "questions per month" charts. Another one, query 1953768, reached Hacker News on July 18, 2026, as "What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph." Gergely Orosz's May 2025 analysis in The Pragmatic Engineer used a third, query 1882532.

What does a Data Explorer question count include, and what does it miss?

The exact SQL of query 1926661 isn't reproduced here, so these are the general properties of counts built on Data Explorer data, not a description of that query's code:

• It counts what's still public. The Data Explorer is built on the network's public data. A question deleted as spam, a duplicate or low quality isn't public, so it doesn't appear. Counts for any month shrink as more of that month's questions are deleted.
• Closed questions are a separate matter. A question closed but not deleted is still public. Whether a chart counts it depends on the query.
• The data lags. A Stack Overflow community manager wrote in 2016 that the Data Explorer "gets updated weekly with all the latest changes." The current schedule isn't documented on any page read for this story.
• The last month is usually partial. A query run on October 28 can include at most the October questions up to the last refresh. If the "fewer than 1,000" figure is the October 2026 bar, it covers part of a month. That is an inference from the refresh schedule, not something the post's title says. The API's count for September 2026, a full month, is also below 1,000, as the next section shows.
• It's Stack Overflow only. The rest of the Stack Exchange network isn't included unless the query adds it.

None of this changes the trend. It does mean a single month's number from one community query is a weak basis for a precise headline on its own.

How many questions did Stack Overflow get in 2025 and 2026?

Published figures conflict, and none comes from Stack Overflow itself. The Stack Exchange API, which reads the live site, gives another:

Last verified: October 29, 2026

The spread between 6,866, 4,162 and 3,862 for the same month is the clearest sign that "Stack Overflow questions per month" has no single answer outside Stack Overflow's own systems. Why the counts differ isn't documented. A chart of monthly questions over time should state which data it uses, when it was run and whether deleted questions are included.

The API count for 2026 shows the slide month by month. Retrieved on October 29, 2026, it gives 3,619 questions for January, 3,044 for February, 2,987 for March, 2,322 for April, 1,986 for May, 1,701 for June, 1,175 for July, 1,019 for August, 969 for September and 963 from October 1 to the morning of October 29. The same count gives 47,571 for January 2024.

Stack Overflow questions per month, 2026

questions created in the month and still on the site (closed included, deleted excluded)

01K2K3K4K

36193044298723221986170111751019969963

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOct 1–29

Show the data

Month	Questions
Jan	3619
Feb	3044
Mar	2987
Apr	2322
May	1986
Jun	1701
Jul	1175
Aug	1019
Sep	969
Oct 1–29	963

These are counts of questions that survive, so earlier months may shrink further as more of them are deleted, and they say nothing about answers or page views.

What does Stack Overflow say about AI and the decline?

Stack Overflow's clearest statements come from its own 2026 Developer Survey, which "more than 30,000 people took," according to the results post by Ryan Donovan on October 6, 2026. That post puts the problem plainly: "Those search engines used to bring folks to a Stack Overflow question, but AI overviews and chatbots don't." The survey's community page breaks down how respondents say they now use developer communities. The shares add up to well over 100%, so respondents evidently could pick more than one:

• 64.1% said they "visit less for simple questions";
• 28.9% "ask fewer questions";
• 26.5% "contribute less";
• 21.8% reported "no change";
• 15.9% "visit more for verification (for example, source attribution)."

That question had 16,985 respondents. A separate question asked, "Which actions do you turn to first when trying to find answers to a problem?" Of 16,664 respondents, 82.7% said search online, 69.9% said ask an AI agent, 28.8% said message someone they trust, and 8.0% said post in a public online forum. Asked why they don't post in developer communities, 44.7% said AI tools answer enough of their questions. Stack Overflow notes on the same page that its results on platform use "might be biased because it's our survey."

Chief executive Prashanth Chandrasekar addressed the decline on The Verge's Decoder podcast in December 2025. According to Sherwood News, he said "pretty much all those declines were with very simple questions" and that "the complex questions still get asked on Stack because there's no other place."

How is Stack Overflow making money if questions are falling?

By selling to companies and to AI labs. Sherwood News reported in January 2026 that annual revenue had roughly doubled to $115 million and that losses fell from $84 million in fiscal 2023 to $22 million in the latest fiscal year. Chandrasekar said on Decoder that Stack Internal, the company's enterprise knowledge product, is used by 25,000 companies, according to Sherwood.

The other business is data. TechCrunch reported on May 6, 2024, that Stack Overflow had signed a deal to supply data to OpenAI, after an earlier, non-exclusive agreement with Google for its Gemini models. TechCrunch noted that Stack Overflow had initially banned ChatGPT-written answers, and that traffic to the site "has reportedly dipped significantly" since capable generative AI models arrived. The result is an awkward loop: models trained partly on Stack Overflow answers now answer the simple questions that used to be asked there.

What does the decline mean for developers and AI coding tools?

Three things follow from the evidence, with different levels of certainty:

• Confirmed by Stack Overflow's survey: most respondents now go to search or an AI agent before posting anywhere, and nearly two-thirds say they visit Stack Overflow less for simple questions.
• Plausible, not measured here: fewer new public questions means less fresh, human-curated material on new libraries and versions, the material that coding assistants and agents have relied on. Chandrasekar made a version of this argument, saying LLMs are only as good as their human-curated data, according to Sherwood.
• Unknown: whether the questions that remain are harder and more valuable, as the CEO suggests. No published dataset read for this story measures question difficulty over time.

For how coding agents compare today, see our Claude Code, Codex and Cursor comparison; for the wider argument about whether AI is "just a tool," see our analysis of Rich Hickey's essay and the responses.

What's confirmed, reported and uncertain

• Confirmed (Hacker News, via HN Algolia): the October 28, 2026 post, its title and link to query 1926661; the same query's January 3, 2026 appearance with 1,550 points; query 1953768's July 18, 2026 appearance.
• Confirmed (Stack Exchange API, retrieved October 29, 2026): the monthly question counts, including 969 for September 2026, 963 for October 1 to 29 and 4,162 for December 2025.
• Confirmed (Stack Overflow): the 2026 survey figures and the October 6 results post quoted above; the Data Explorer's basis in public data (2010) and weekly updates (as stated in 2016).
• Reported: December 2025's 6,866 questions, revenue, losses and the CEO's remarks (Sherwood News); the OpenAI and Google data deals and the traffic dip (TechCrunch).
• Community (Tier 3): December 2025 at 3,862 and the 2014 peak of about 207,000, from a Hacker News commenter.
• Uncertain: the exact SQL and current values of query 1926661; which month the "fewer than 1,000" figure refers to and whether it is a partial month; why the API, Data Explorer and Sherwood counts differ; the Data Explorer's current refresh schedule.