The market for low-code, no-code, and intelligent developer technologies (LCNCIDT) continues to see strong demand from both professional and non-technical developers. A new International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast shows worldwide LCNCIDT revenue growing to $21.0 billion in 2026 with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.8% from 2021-2026.
Enterprises are implementing LCNCIDT technologies to improve developer productivity, either by enabling professional developers to work more quickly by streamlining or eliminating aspects of the development process, or by providing non-technical developers with tools they can use to create or update digital solutions without the help of professional developers.
“The market for LCNCIDT technologies is being driven by the global shortage of full-time developers,” said Michele Rosen, research manager, Low-Code, No-Code, and Intelligent Developer Technologies at IDC. “This situation is expected to continue throughout this decade, creating a strong market for technologies that increase developer productivity or expand the potential pool of developers.”
Growth in LCNCIDT is driven in part by the adoption of cloud-native technologies as organizations pivot toward a digital-first world. The advantages of cloud-native software development include increased agility, lower hosting costs, faster time to market, and improvements to user experience. However, this approach also entails risks for cost and operations management, especially if the organization doesn’t have the necessary expertise in-house. Vendors that provide LCNCIDT developer tools that enable the transition to and management of cloud-native software development, including cloud-native design tools, IDEs, and DevOps tools, have an opportunity to assist organizations with this complex but necessary transition.
Many of the capabilities provided by low-code and no-code tools benefit from cloud-based development, and many intelligent developer technologies rely on cloud-based services. As a result, much of the LCNCIDT revenue over the past several years has been generated from cloud-based deployments. IDC expects this trend to continue, with more than 75% of market revenue generated by cloud deployments by 2026.
The low-code, no-code, and intelligent developer technologies competitive market includes the products that enable professional developers to work more quickly by streamlining or eliminating aspects of the development process and that expand the developer population by providing non-technical developers with development interfaces that abstract away some or all of the knowledge required to code in traditional development environments. The market is made up of:
- Low-code developer technologies, which provide visually guided developer tools, drag-and-drop development interfaces, prebuilt code components and templates, and tools for modeling and integrating processes and data to accelerate and simplify the design and development of custom digital solutions. Low-code developer technologies include application development platforms, Web development platforms, UI/UX components, and database-centric low-code application development platforms.
- No-code developer technologies, which provide visually guided, model-driven, and/or AI-driven technologies to enable the creation of software (apps, websites, etc.) by developers who do not have a technical background. No-code developer technologies do not expose developers to command-line code. No-code developer technologies include application development platforms, Web development platforms, and UI/UX design tools.
- Intelligent developer technologies, which leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate software development or the development of AI-powered digital solutions. Intelligent developer technologies include code autocompletion tools, AI development technologies, conversational AI development tools and platforms, and test automation.