Survey: Which Kotlin Frameworks Are Actually Used in Production

Online Python Trainer for Beginners

Learn Python easily without overwhelming theory. Solve practical tasks with automatic checking, get hints in Russian, and write code directly in your browser — no installation required.

Start Course

Survey: Which Kotlin Frameworks Are Used in Production

The Kotlin ecosystem continues to actively develop, and every year more companies choose this language for critical projects. However, which stack do developers prefer in real combat conditions? A recent survey among professional Kotlin communities shed light on current preferences.

The survey involved more than 1500 developers from Russia, Europe, and Asia. Respondents indicated which frameworks and libraries they use in a production environment, not in pet projects. Here are the key results.

🥇 Market Leaders: Spring Boot and Ktor

The undisputed favorite remains Spring Boot — chosen by 42% of respondents. The reason is simple: a huge community, ecosystem maturity, and a rich set of tools for microservices. However, the second most popular framework, Ktor, received 31% of the votes. Developers note its lightness, asynchronicity, and native support for coroutines.

Spring Boot — 42% (main use cases: REST API, enterprise solutions)
Ktor — 31% (high-load systems, real-time applications)
Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) — 18% (mobile and desktop projects)
Jetpack Compose — 9% (Android frontend, desktop)

📱 Mobile Development: Jetpack Compose and KMP

In the mobile development segment, an interesting trend is observed: Jetpack Compose is used in production by only 9% of respondents, although it is discussed much more often in the community. Many developers still trust classic XML layout or React Native. Meanwhile, Kotlin Multiplatform (18%) is confidently gaining ground — it is chosen for sharing business logic between iOS and Android.

🔧 Tools and Libraries That Make the Top

In addition to frameworks, the survey revealed popular auxiliary libraries:

Exposed — ORM for working with databases (used by 23% of backend developers)
Koin — DI framework (17%)
Arrow — functional programming (12%)
Kotlinx.serialization — JSON serialization (used by almost everyone who works with APIs)

💡 Why Do Developers Choose Kotlin?

Among the reasons for switching to Kotlin in production, respondents cited:

Type safety and null-safety — reducing the number of bugs by 30-40%
Full compatibility with Java — the ability to migrate gradually
Performance — Kotlin code runs on the JVM without overhead
Coroutine support — simplifying asynchronous programming

Interestingly, 28% of survey participants admitted: they use Kotlin only for new projects, leaving old Java code unchanged. This speaks to a pragmatic approach: the language is chosen where it provides maximum benefit.