Python has evolved as one of the most versatile programming languages. Introduced in the year 1991, it has become one of the favourite programming languages for developers, startups, and some of the giant tech brands for several reasons. There are thousands of applications built using this server-side programming language.
What makes this programming language so efficient and adaptable? Well, Python is more than just a server-side programming language. Along with web development, there are several areas where Python is being used. Game development, desktop GUI, audio & video applications, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data science & data visualization are some of the areas where Python is being used as a core programming language.
In this article, we have mentioned the top 16 tech companies that are using Python and how they are making the most of it.
1. Netflix
Netflix is one of the biggest video streaming services across the globe. The popularity of the platform can be estimated from the fact that globally, there were around 247 million Netflix subscribers in Q3 2023. It has 220.6 million paid subscribers with a revenue of $33.7 billion.
On its technology blog, Netflix confirms that it uses Python and says:
“Software engineers at Netflix have the freedom to choose the technologies best suited for the job. More and more, developers turn to Python due to its rich batteries-included standard library, succinct and clean yet expressive syntax, large developer community, and the wealth of third-party libraries one can tap into to solve a given problem.”
2. Uber
Uber is a global car hail and ride-sharing service provider. It’s one of the best examples of a shared economy. Uber operates in 72 countries and has completed over 7.6 billion journeys, according to Statista. The mobility services company's net revenue in 2022 was around 32 billion US dollars.
In the Uber engineering blog, the company shares its prime tech stack and says:
“At the lower levels, Uber’s software engineers primarily write in Python, Node.js, Go, and Java. We started with two main languages: Node.js for the Marketplace team, and Python for everyone else.”
3. Pinterest
Pinterest is an image-based social media network that enables its users to discover and save information on the World Wide Web in the form of images, GIFs, and short videos. With an active user base of 482 million, Pinterest has a strong presence and user engagement for topics such as fashion, technology, science, DIY, food, and more.
On its technology blog, Pinterest’s software engineers confirm using Python as the underlying technology and say:
“When we first started building Pinterest, we used Python as our app development language, which helped us build quickly and reliably. Over the years we built many tools around Python, including Pinball, MySQL_utils, and pymemcache, as well as a set of libraries used daily for service communication and configuration management.”
4. Instagram
Instagram is a social networking platform that allows its users to take photos and videos, edit them with digital filters, and share them with their followers. The platform has 2.4 billion monthly active users and generated an estimated $71 billion in revenue in 2024.
On how Instagram’s web service efficiency is improved with Python, Instagram engineering team says:
“Instagram currently features the world’s largest deployment of the Django web framework, which is written entirely in Python.”
5. Quora
Quora is a question-and-answer platform that allows internet users to ask questions, answer & edit them, either factually or in the form of opinions. There are 400+ million monthly active users on Quora with approximately 15,000 answers written on the platform daily.
In a Quora post, the CEO/Co-founder of this Q&A website unveils the reason behind choosing Python over PHP and says:
“We decided that Python was fast enough for most of what we needed to do. We had a lot of confidence that Python would continue to evolve in a direction that would be good for the life of our codebase, having watched it evolve over the last 5 years.”
ALSO READ: How Spotify Works: Business Model and Revenue Streams
6. Spotify
Spotify is a music streaming service that gives access to millions of songs to listeners, globally. The platform had 220 million paid subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2023, a 17% increase year-on-year, with 100 million songs available and five million podcasts.
In one of its technology articles, Spotify talks about why it uses Python for development and says:
“Speed is a big focus for Spotify. Python fits well into this mindset, as it gets us big wins in the speed of development. We also make heavy use of Python async frameworks to help services that are IO-bound."
7. Dropbox
Dropbox is a file hosting service that offers the option of cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox has 500M+ downloads on the Google Play Store, 15M+ paying customers, and is available for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and Linux OS. Additionally, it is projected that cloud file-sharing systems will store 100 zettabytes of data by 2025. According to Stackshare, Python is one of the prime languages that Dropbox uses.
8. BitBucket
BitBucket is a web-based hosting service for source code and development projects. It has a user base of 10M+ registered users and over 28 million repositories. According to builtwith, 1,816 live websites are using Atlassian Bitbucket. BitBucket is written in Python using the Django web framework.
9. Reddit
Reddit is a social news aggregator, web content rating and discussion platform. It enables the registered members to submit content in the form of links, text posts, images, which can further be upvoted or downvoted by other members. As of 2024, the platform boasts over 1.6 billion monthly users and 70+ million daily users, earning its popularity as the front page of the internet.
In a PyCon keynote, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian share the reasons behind choosing Python for Reddit and says:
“The biggest thing that has kept us on Python is there is a library for everything. Another reason is, Python is extremely expressive, readable, and writable.”
10. Instacart
Instacart operates as a same-day grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada. Valued at $10 billion, the company serves more than 75,000 stores across more than 13,000 cities.
In one of the blogs on StackShare, Instacart shares why Python is their choice for building this grocery delivery system:
“We have a data science team that works in both Python and R. in the case of demand forecasting, we have Python or R code that does the estimates, that reads all the data, comes up with how many shoppers we’re going to need for the next week or two, and then writes those values.”
11. Facebook
One of the most widely used social media platforms on the internet, Facebook is majorly built on Python. Although the application also uses PHP and C++ programming languages, a large part of it is built on Python.
Almost 21% of the codebase on Facebook is supported by Python, which includes services such as TORconfig. This service is responsible for managing network switch setup and imaging. The programming language also supports the Dapper service on Facebook, which provides scheduling and automates the implementation of maintenance work.
12. YouTube
Anyone familiar with the internet knows about this digital platform named YouTube. It is now a Google-owned video streaming application and has become a popular place for creators, businesses, and the general public to share their stories in video formats.
The platform uses Python programming language for various features, which include the view videos option, administer videos, control templates, canonical data access, etc. Initially, the platform was built on PHP, however, the programming language did not assist with new features such as live streaming, and therefore, a more advanced coding language was required.
Python helped developers at YouTube implement codes swiftly and introduce new features quickly. The programming language also helped developers in Frontend and API development, improving YouTube’s functionality and user experience.
13. Disqus
Disqus is a popular American blog comment-hosting plug-in application. The app enables creators to increase engagement on their blog websites by managing comments, streamlining discussions, and moderating content. The community consists of more than 2 billion users monthly in more than 190 countries.
Disqus is majorly built using Python frameworks, which allows for multiple sign-ins and cross-site notifications that keep the users in the loop. The application used Django due to its "batteries-included" approach, which provided them with many built-in features required for a web service like authentication, admin interface, and database schema migrations.
14. Lyft
Lyft, Inc. is an American startup that provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing, motorized scooters, bicycle sharing, rental cars, food delivery, and automobiles for hire in more than 200 cities across the United States.
In addition to receiving a fee from each booking, Lyft sets prices that fluctuate based on local supply and demand at the time of the booking and are quoted to the consumer in advance. After Uber, Lyft is the second-biggest ride-sharing business in the US.
Indeed, the primary programming language that Lyft uses for its digital platform is Python, extensively employed for server-side scripting, data analysis, and machine learning. Its readability and simplicity contribute to its effectiveness in managing complex systems and algorithms.
15. Mozilla Firefox
Well, who hasn't heard of Mozilla Firefox? The Mozilla Foundation created Mozilla Firefox or simply Firefox, which is an open-source, free web browser. In fact, as of December 2023, StatCounter reported that it ranked fourth in terms of popularity among PC web browsers, behind Google Chrome (62%), Safari (13%), and Microsoft Edge (11%), with a 6.7% usage share on traditional PCs (i.e., as a desktop browser).
Now, a lot of people are unaware of the connection between Python and this browser's success.
Initially, Mozilla Firefox was developed using PHP+CakePHP. But as the business grew, those languages were unable to process the millions of queries that were made every month. Thus, Mozilla was switched to Python+Django by the developers.
The organization now uses Python to carry out tasks like test harnesses, continuous integration configuration, command-line tooling, and system construction.
16. Amazon
Well, everyone has heard the story of this garage startup. When the internet was just starting, a guy named Jeff Bezos had this idea: 'What if people could buy books online?' That's how the online bookstore Amazon was founded in 1994.
Today, Amazon has grown quickly and has become a household name. It offers lakhs of products with categories ranging from fashion, electronics, and homewares to furniture, personal care, and sporting goods. Amazon.com is now recognized as one of the Big Five tech companies along with Microsoft, Apple, Meta, and Alphabet.
But what most people don’t know is that the recommendation engine employed on its digital platform is built using Python. Thanks to Python's scalability, it stands out as one of the premier technologies for extensive data analysis.
When to Choose Python
1. Quick Development and Prototyping
For tasks requiring quickness and flexibility, such as creating MVPs or prototypes.
Why Python: Python's high-level abstractions and succinct syntax allow for quick development. Because of how quickly it can be read, it's a great option for projects whose requirements change over time.
2. Website Creation
Developing content management systems, APIs, or web applications.
Why Python: Strong web frameworks like Django and Flask are available for Python. Full-stack solutions like Django prioritize convention over configuration, whereas Flask is more flexible for smaller projects. Scalability, security, and efficiency are given top priority in both frameworks.
3. Compatibility Across Platforms
Requiring applications to function properly across multiple operating systems.
Why Python: Cross-platform development is made possible by Python's portability. You can ensure wide compatibility by packaging Python applications as executables for Windows, Linux, and macOS by using tools such as PyInstaller or cx_Freeze.
4. Data Science and Analytics
Examining and interpreting huge datasets to gain insights and make decisions.
Why Python: Most data scientists now use Python as their preferred programming language after the releases of "Numpy" and "Pandas." Because it can simplify data processing, analysis, and visualization, giving organizations the tools they need to make well-informed, data-driven business decisions.
ALSO READ: 7 Application Areas of Python Programming Language
With these examples and statements, Python is clearly empowering top tech companies to build efficient, scalable, and complex business applications. Wondering which technology to choose for your next app development project? Request a free consultation with our experts to unveil how Python can add value to your business when you hire python developers.