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Guides: Kubernetes Statistics

36 Kubernetes Statistics You Must Know in 2025

What Is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open-source platform to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Originally developed by Google, it is now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

Kubernetes provides a framework to run distributed systems. It manages the scheduling of containers across a cluster of machines, monitors their health, handles scaling based on demand, and enables automated rollouts and rollbacks. Kubernetes abstracts the underlying infrastructure so developers and operators can focus on defining how applications should run.

Key components include the kubernetes control plane, which makes global decisions about the cluster, and the nodes, which run containerized applications. Tools like deployments, services, and config maps allow users to describe their desired system state in declarative configuration files, making operations predictable and repeatable.

This is part of a series of articles about Kubernetes security.

In this article will cover the following Kubernetes statistics:

Key Kubernetes Statistics

Adoption Rates and Market Penetration

Kubernetes has quickly become the industry standard for container orchestration across enterprise environments.

  1. Over 60% of enterprises have adopted Kubernetes
  2. CNCF reports adoption rates have risen to 96%
  3. 91% of organizations using Kubernetes have more than 1,000 employees
  4. 5.6 million developers globally use Kubernetes, accounting for 31% of all backend developers
  5. Kubernetes holds 92% of the container orchestration tools market share

Sources: CNCF Annual Survey 2023, Red Hat State of Kubernetes Security Report 2024, Developer Nation Report, Datadog Container Report

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Kubernetes Usage by Company Size

Kubernetes adoption is highest among larger organizations with complex infrastructure and scale requirements.

  1. 34% of Kubernetes users are in companies with over 20,000 employees
  2. Another 34% come from companies with 1,000–5,000 employees
  3. 23% of Kubernetes users work in companies with 5,000–20,000 staff
  4. Only 9% of adopters are companies with 500–1,000 employees
  5. 91% of Kubernetes users are in companies with more than 1,000 employees

Source: CNCF 2024 Kubernetes Benchmark Report

Reasons for Kubernetes Adoption

Organizations are adopting Kubernetes for flexibility, automation, and infrastructure abstraction.

  1. 65% run Kubernetes in multiple environments for portability
  2. 48% use it to abstract infrastructure and accelerate modernization
  3. 44% automate application operations with Kubernetes
  4. 93% use or plan to use containers in production
  5. DevOps is the leading discipline responsible for Kubernetes and container security

Sources: Red Hat State of Kubernetes Security Report 2024, Red Hat 2023 Global Tech Outlook

Market Size and Growth

Kubernetes continues to experience rapid market expansion.

  1. Market value reached USD 1.8 billion in 2022, up from 1.46 billion in 2021, and is projected to hit USD 9.69 billion by 2031 (CAGR 23.4%)
  2. The Kubernetes security market was valued at USD 1.195 billion in 2022 and is forecasted to reach USD 10.7 billion by 2031 (CAGR 27.6%)

Source: Electro IQ

Kubernetes Security Challenges and Misconfigurations

Security misconfigurations remain widespread, posing risks to workloads and compliance.

  1. 44% run over 71% of workloads as root
  2. 62% say at least half of workloads are vulnerable to image issues
  3. 46% use deprecated Helm charts in half or more of workloads
  4. 90% of granted cloud privileges are unused

Source: 2023 Fairwinds Kubernetes Benchmark Report

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DevSecOps Integration and Security Investment

Organizations are investing in DevSecOps to address Kubernetes security, but gaps remain.

  1. 42% of organizations have advanced DevSecOps initiatives
  2. 48% are in early stages of DevSecOps adoption
  3. 10% still operate with siloed DevOps and security teams
  4. 42% cite insufficient investment or inadequate threat coverage as top security concerns

Source: Red Hat Kubernetes Trends Report

Ecosystem and Technology Integration

Kubernetes is part of a broader cloud-native ecosystem with strong toolchain integration.

  1. 77% of users employ observability tools
  2. 71% use databases with Kubernetes
  3. 44% integrate messaging systems
  4. 39% use continuous delivery tools
  5. 36% run big data workloads on Kubernetes
  6. 34% use security tools
  7. 31% use service meshes for advanced networking

Source: CNCF Annual Survey 2023

Beyond service meshes, traffic management at the cluster edge is increasingly handled by the Kubernetes gateway API, which provides a standardized, role-oriented way to route and secure ingress traffic into Kubernetes workloads.

Kubernetes logo within a circuit board cloud on a blue binary background.

Community and Global Events

The Kubernetes community is expanding worldwide through active engagement and collaboration.

  1. 88,000+ contributors from 8,000+ companies in 44 countries
  2. Kubernetes-related events grew from 29 in 2023 to 34 in 2024
  3. CNCF expanded KCDs to underrepresented regions like Costa Rica, Dhaka, and São Paulo
  4. 110,000+ Kubernetes-related job listings on LinkedIn as of 2025

Source: Electro IQ

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Related content: Read our guide to Kubernetes security checklist

Boosting Kubernetes Security with Calico

Tigera’s commercial solutions provide Kubernetes security and observability for multi-cluster, multi-cloud, and hybrid-cloud deployments. Both Calico Enterprise and Calico Cloud provide the following features for security and observability:

Security

  • Zero trust for workloads – Prevent lateral movement of threats and maintain compliance by applying fine-grained security policies to restrict communication between workloads and third-party applications, the internet, and other workloads.
  • Compliance reporting and alerts – Continuously monitor and enforce compliance controls, easily create custom reports for audit.
  • Intrusion detection & prevention (IDS/IPS) – Detect and mitigate Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) using machine learning and a rule-based engine that enables active monitoring.
  • Microsegmentation across Host/VMs/Containers – Deploy a scalable, unified microsegmentation model for hosts, VMs, containers, pods, and services that works across all your environments.
  • Data-in-transit encryption – Protect sensitive data and meet compliance requirements with high-performance encryption for data-in-transit.

Observability

  • Dynamic Service and Threat Graph – Observe upstream and downstream dependencies for microservices, and service-to-service interactions within a Kubernetes cluster, with a dynamic live view that helps identify security gaps and troubleshoot connectivity issues faster.
  • Application-layer observability – Gain visibility into service-to-service communication within your Kubernetes environment, without the operational complexity and performance overhead of service mesh.
  • Dynamic Packet Capture – Perform packet capture for a specific pod or collection of pods with this self-service, on-demand tool. The tool integrates with Kubernetes RBAC to limit and secure users’ access to the endpoints and namespaces assigned to them.
  • DNS Dashboard – Quickly confirm or eliminate DNS as the root cause for microservice and application connectivity issues in Kubernetes.
  • Flow visualizer – Get a 360-degree view of a namespace or workload, including analytics around how security policies are being evaluated in real time and a volumetric representation of flows.

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