Perl in the TIOBE Index

Commentary

Perl has been doing well in the TIOBE Index over recent months. I've noticed a new "Perl in TIOBE" post in r/perl pretty much every month. That's partly because of how TIOBE report numbers (they publish a new report every month, but compare numbers from a year earlier). But there certainly is good news for Perl underneath the monthly noise.

I had TIOBE Perl data going back to 2015, so I decided to look at the underlying data (sadly I don't have data going back to the early 2000s, when Perl was a top 5 language). The graph below is the result.

I'll leave serious statistical analysis to the experts, but a few things leap out at me:

• From 2015–2017, Perl was usually a top-10 language (peaking at #8). By 2018–2019 it was typically in the mid-teens.
• From 2018, Perl started a long (and far from consistent) fall reaching a position outside of the top 30 in January 2025
• From Jan to Aug 2025 it improved every month, reaching #9. Since then it’s hovered around the edge of the top 10 (roughly #9–#12).

TIOBE has a chart showing the raw data back to 2001.