EF Core adoption is very healthy

I commonly see feedback from people assuming that EF Core is not heavily used. This isn't true. The internal usage numbers are very healthy. The number of people moving from previous EF Core releases to 3.1 is also very healthy. I'm not going to post these numbers on my personal blog because, basically, I don't want to get fired! However, the trends are also visible in public data--notably, NuGet package downloads.

At the time of writing, NuGet Trends is returning the following data:

NuGet Trends

Now, NuGet package downloads are notoriously hard to interpret. However, I think the trend here is pretty clear.

I should point out that I don't intend from showing this that people drop one technology and use another. As I said in my previous post, please use what works best for you.

I think it's also true that Microsoft packages have an advantage. Fully embracing the .NET ecosystem is something I push for internally. It's much better now than it was 10 years ago, but there is still room for improvement.

Anyway, as I said, I really just want to point out that EF Core adoption is very healthy and growing very fast.


This page is up-to-date as of January 29th, 2020. Some things change. Some things stay the same. Use your noggin.