Svelte is a free, open-source front-end framework that compiles components at build time instead of shipping a large runtime to the browser.
SvelteKit is the companion framework for routing, server rendering and deployment, much as Next.js is to React. Rich Harris created Svelte, and its maintainers now develop it in the open.
Svelte has no company behind it, so there is no revenue, funding round or customer count to report. The public numbers are GitHub stars, npm downloads, developer surveys and a community donation fund.
I pulled download counts from npm’s public API and checked them against React for the same dates, because npm counts across the whole ecosystem rose sharply this year. Data was checked on October 20, 2026.
Svelte Statistics
| Metric | Figure | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Svelte GitHub stars | About 88,100 | Oct 20, 2026 | GitHub |
| SvelteKit GitHub stars | About 20,800 | Oct 20, 2026 | GitHub |
| License | MIT (both) | Oct 20, 2026 | GitHub |
svelte npm downloads, last 30 days | 26,679,465 | Sep 19 to Oct 18, 2026 | npm downloads API |
@sveltejs/kit npm downloads, last 30 days | 12,647,958 | Sep 19 to Oct 18, 2026 | npm downloads API |
| Svelte usage among developers | 7.2% of 23,678 respondents | 2025 survey | Stack Overflow |
| Svelte “admired” score | 62.4% (column labels unclear) | 2025 survey | Stack Overflow |
| Svelte 5 release | Oct 22, 2024 | 2024 | Svelte team blog |
| Total raised on Open Collective | $309,844.88 | Oct 20, 2026 | Open Collective |
Svelte GitHub stars and activity
- Svelte: About 88.1k stars and 5.2k forks on October 20, 2026, MIT-licensed.
- SvelteKit: About 20.8k stars and 2.3k forks, MIT-licensed.
- Releases: GitHub’s releases page listed svelte@5.56.9 on August 12, preceded by 5.56.8 (July 24), 5.56.7 (July 20), 5.56.6 (July 16) and 5.56.5 (July 14). The page omits the year. Wikipedia lists 5.38.3 as the stable release in August 2025, so these look like 2026 releases, but that is my inference. Wikipedia also gives SvelteKit 2.67.0 as the latest version as of June 2026. That is five releases in about a month, so the project ships often.
- Star history: I found no dated earlier star counts I could trust, so I make no growth claim.
- Contributors and dependents: GitHub’s page showed neither count.
npm downloads, checked against React
| Package | Sep 19 to Oct 18, 2026 | Sep 19 to Oct 18, 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
svelte | 26,679,465 | 8,375,609 | About +219% |
@sveltejs/kit | 12,647,958 | 2,758,031 | About +359% |
react (control) | 772,199,411 | 192,094,319 | About +302% |
I pulled all counts from npm’s public downloads API on October 20, 2026 and calculated the changes.
- How to read the growth: React’s own count rose about 4x in the same window, which I cannot explain from developer growth alone. Possible causes include automated installs, CI, AI coding agents and counting changes, but I found no source that says. Against that baseline,
sveltegrew less than React, and@sveltejs/kitgrew a little more. Neither is strong evidence of extra adoption. - Scale:
sveltedownloads are about 3.5% of React’s in the same window. - SvelteKit vs Svelte:
@sveltejs/kithas roughly half the downloads ofsvelte, which suggests many Svelte projects do not use SvelteKit, or use it alongside tools that install differently. That is an inference, not a measured fact. - Caveat: npm counts include repeat installs, CI and bots, and say nothing about production sites.
Svelte Developer surveys
Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025 (23,678 respondents answered the web frameworks question):
| Group | Svelte usage |
|---|---|
| All respondents | 7.2% |
| Professional developers | 6.9% |
| Learning to code | 11.8% |
- The page lists 11.1% and 62.4% beside Svelte, which I read as desired and admired, based on how neighboring entries matched the text. The column labels were not visible in what I could read, so confirm on Stack Overflow before quoting either figure.
- For comparison: Wikipedia says 73% of Svelte users in Stack Overflow’s 2024 survey wanted to keep using it. If that is the same “admired” measure, it would be a drop to 62.4%, but I did not verify the 2024 figure at the source, and survey methods can change.
- Stack Overflow’s list did not include SvelteKit.
State of JavaScript 2025: Svelte and SvelteKit both appear in the front-end and meta-framework charts, but the page text I could read gave no usage, satisfaction or ranking numbers, because the figures load in interactive charts.
It also reported unchanged usage rankings among front-end frameworks, apart from Alpine.js and htmx swapping places, and said interest gained ground only for Solid and Preact. I have no sourced Svelte figure from that survey.
Surveys draw self-selected respondents, so they reflect people who answer developer surveys.
Svelte 5 and recent product milestones
- October 22, 2024: Svelte 5 released. The Svelte team called it “a ground-up rewrite” and “the most significant release in the project’s history,” after almost 18 months of development. It introduced runes (explicit reactivity such as
$state), snippets in place of slots, event handlers as ordinary props and native TypeScript support. The post said Svelte 5 is almost fully backward compatible and gave no size or speed measurements. - May 2025: Asynchronous Svelte, which lets you use
awaitinside components, was reported as available (The New Stack, May 10, 2025). It was described then as not production-ready, and I did not check whether that has changed. - 2026: The version list above shows steady 5.x releases, and Wikipedia gives SvelteKit 2.67.0 as of June 2026.
Svelte Funding, sponsors and company ties
Svelte is run by volunteers and funded by donations. The Svelte Open Collective page (read October 20, 2026) shows:
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total raised | $309,844.88 |
| Total disbursed | $221,804.27 |
| Current balance | $88,040.61 |
| Estimated annual budget | $19,954.33 |
| Total contributors | 565 (272 backers, 35 sponsors, 557 one-time or custom donors) |
Top organization sponsors (lifetime totals): Drips $107,299.80 (since May 2024), Datawrapper $30,000 (since October 2020), Vercel $18,000 (since July 2021), GitHub Sponsors $11,494.39 (since March 2025) and Cohere $10,000 (since January 2022).
The page’s most recent news update dates from November 18, 2023.
- Vercel connection: In a blog post dated January 13, 2022, Svelte announced that Rich Harris had joined Vercel to work on Svelte full-time. That is employment, so the donation figures above do not capture it. The post gave no statement on independence, so I make none.
- Early numbers from that post (2022, Svelte’s own claims): Svelte usage more than doubled in 2021, SvelteKit had been downloaded almost one million times, and more than $60,000 had been donated through Open Collective.
I found no venture funding, acquisition or revenue figure, since Svelte is not a company.
Svelte Market share
I tried to read W3Techs’ Svelte page and it failed to load, so I have no verified share of websites.
Svelte compiles away its runtime, which also makes it hard for detection tools to spot, so any such figure would likely undercount it. For hosting and platform data on the other side of the ecosystem, see our Vercel statistics page.
How Svelte compares on the numbers in 2026?
| Svelte | Astro | TanStack Query | htmx | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars (Oct 20, 2026) | About 88,100 | About 61,700 | About 50,100 | About 49,400 |
| npm downloads, last 30 days | 26,679,465 | 28,146,861 | 279,215,374 | 1,133,668 (plus CDN use) |
| What it is | Front-end framework | Content-focused framework | Data-fetching library | HTML-over-the-wire library |
Stars measure interest in a repository, and downloads include automation, so I would not rank these on either. The libraries also do different jobs, so they are not direct substitutes.
For more on the others, see our statistics pages for Astro, htmx and TanStack. If you are choosing a front-end stack for a client project, our custom web application development service covers that kind of work.
What the Svelte numbers suggest?
- Svelte has the most GitHub interest in this group. About 88,100 stars, ahead of Astro, TanStack Query and htmx.
- Its npm growth matches the ecosystem. React’s count rose about 4x in the same window, and Svelte’s rose about 3.2x, so I would not call it a surge.
- Developers like it but few use it. Stack Overflow 2025 shows 7.2% usage and an admired score around 62%.
- Funding is small and community-led. About $310,000 raised on Open Collective since the fund began, with a roughly $20,000 estimated annual budget.
- Big claims need a source. The “usage doubled” line comes from Svelte’s own 2022 post.
FAQ
How many GitHub stars does Svelte have?
About 88,100 stars and 5,200 forks on October 20, 2026. SvelteKit has about 20,800 stars.
How many people download Svelte?
The svelte package had 26,679,465 npm downloads from September 19 to October 18, 2026, and React had about 29 times as many in the same window. Counts include automated installs.
What percentage of developers use Svelte?
7.2% of respondents in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, from 23,678 who answered the web frameworks question.
Who owns Svelte?
No company owns it. Maintainers develop it in the open, and donations flow through Open Collective. Rich Harris, its creator, has worked on Svelte at Vercel since January 2022, per Svelte’s own post.
Is Svelte better than React?
The data cannot answer that. React has far more downloads, and Svelte has a higher stars count in this group, but the two measure different things. Stack Overflow’s admired score is a preference signal, not a measure of fit for a project.
Sources
- GitHub: sveltejs/svelte, its releases page and sveltejs/kit (Oct 20, 2026)
- npm downloads API, queried Oct 20, 2026:
svelte, 2026 and 2025;@sveltejs/kit, 2026 and 2025;react, 2026 and 2025 - Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025: technology (2025)
- State of JavaScript 2025: front-end frameworks and meta-frameworks (2025)
- Svelte blog: Svelte 5 is alive (Oct 22, 2024) and Accelerating Svelte’s development (Jan 13, 2022); both vendor sources
- The New Stack: Svelte adds asynchronous work inside components (May 10, 2025)
- Svelte on Open Collective (read Oct 20, 2026)
- Wikipedia: Svelte (secondary source; used for version and 2024 survey context)
