R Language Is Making. R Language Makes a Comeback: Tiobe IndexThe R language for statistical computing has experienced a resurgence in popularity, according to the latest Tiobe index of programming language popularity.
s experienced a resurgence in popularity, according to the latest Tiobe index of programming language popularity. In the December 2025 index, R ranks 10th with a 1.96% rating. This marks a significant comeback for R, which has cracked the Tiobe index’s top 10 before, including in April and July 2020.
Unlike rival programming languages, R is specifically designed to cater to statisticians and data scientists, making it a powerful tool for rapid experimentation, statistical modeling, and exploratory data analysis. Despite some limitations, including an unconventional syntax and scalability issues, R remains a popular choice among domain experts and thrives in research-driven industries and universities.
“Programming language R is known for fitting statisticians and data scientists like a glove,” said Paul Jansen, CEO of software quality services vendor Tiobe. “As statistics and large-scale data visualization become increasingly important, R has regained popularity.”
R’s resurgence is evident in its performance on both the Tiobe and Pypl indices. On the Tiobe index, R ranks 10th with a 1.96% rating, while on the Pypl index, it ranks fifth with a 5.84% share. The Pypl index analyzes how often language tutorials are searched on Google, providing further evidence of R’s growing popularity among developers and data scientists.
The Tiobe Programming Community Index assesses language popularity based on a formula that evaluates the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors pertinent to a language. Popular websites, including Google, Amazon, and Wikipedia, are used to calculate its ratings.
The current top 10 for the Tiobe index includes:
- Python, 23.64%
- C, 10.11%
- C++, 8.95%
- Java, 8.7%
- C#, 7.26%
- JavaScript, 2.96%
- Visual Basic, 2.81%
- SQL, 2.1%
- Perl, 1.97%
- R, 1.96%
The Pypl index also highlights the growing popularity of R, ranking it fifth with a 5.84% share. Other popular languages on the Pypl index include Python, C/C++, Objective-C, and Java.
It will be interesting to see whether R can maintain its current position in the Tiobe index. For now, it seems that the R language is making a comeback, and its popularity among statisticians and data scientists is unlikely to wane anytime soon.
