{"slug": "cpan-uploads-are-up-50-year-over-year", "title": "CPAN Uploads Are Up 50% Year-over-Year", "summary": "CPAN uploads rose 50% year-over-year in the first eight months of 2026, with monthly uploads increasing from 5,676 in Jan-Aug 2025 to 9,430 in Jan-Aug 2026, according to an analysis by Olaf Alders using Claude-generated scripts. The number of unique releasers also grew from 1,219 to 1,479 over the same period, while first-time releasers remained a small share of active accounts.", "body_md": "# CPAN Uploads Are Up 50% Year-over-Year\n\n## Table of Contents\n\nWith the rise of LLMs we’ve seen a couple of interesting things happen.\n\n- The speed at which software can be created has increased greatly\n- The speed at which exploits are being found (and hopefully patched) has likely increased at a similar rate\n\n\"[Ieper - up arrow](https://www.flickr.com/photos/8265353@N05/2449451261)\" by [R/DV/RS](https://www.flickr.com/photos/redvers/) is licensed under [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) .\n\nI have no hard data for either of these things. Imagine me waving my hands.\n\nAs I was hand waving, I wondered what kind of impacts this is having on the\n[CPAN](https://www.cpan.org/) ecosystem. I know that a lot of authors have been very responsive to\nreceiving CVEs via the [CPAN\nSecurity](https://www.perl.com/article/alpha-omega-donates-usd-250-000-for-perl-and-cpan-security/)\nteam. I also have seen that some authors are cranking out LLM-fueled libraries\nat a dizzying pace. I found myself longing for a report by [Neil Bowers](https://neilb.org/), but\nthese are created on an annual basis and I need to know **right now**. Consider\nthis an unsatisfying halfway point as we wait for Neil Bowers’ next [CPAN\nReport](https://neilb.org/2026/01/13/cpan-report-2026.html).\n\nNeil Bowers just after approving a new PAUSE account.\n\nI will now state plainly that the prose in this article is mine, but the rest\nis Claude. I’m quite happy to have Claude run reports for me, even if it initially tries\nto write them in Python. The scripts live at\n[oalders/cpan-activity](https://github.com/oalders/cpan-activity) so that you\ncan re-run them yourself if you like. Don’t consider them good prior art. I looked briefly and then had to look\naway.\n\n## [#](#what-was-measured)What Was Measured\n\nI decided that I cared about 2026 and that I’d like to see a month over month comparison between Jan-Aug 2026 and the same period in the previous year. I can hear you right now telling me the various beefs you have with my approach, but if I’m honest, I cannot actually hear you as I’m plugging my ears. Imagine me saying “la la la”.\n\n## [#](#uploads)Uploads\n\nLet’s start with uploads. That’s probably the raw number that most of us associate with CPAN activity. This one is surprising to me in how clearly that graph is trending upwards.\n\n| Uploads | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | \n|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|\n| 2025 | 1,704 | 708 | 727 | 896 | 670 | 507 | 512 | 552 | \n| 2026 | 1,189 | 866 | 1,430 | 1,190 | 919 | 1,052 | 1,368 | 1,416 | \n\n## [#](#releasers)Releasers\n\nReleasers tracks the number of unique [PAUSE](https://pause.perl.org/) ids to\nupload in a given month. This has also clearly trended up.\n\n| Releasers | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | \n|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|\n| 2025 | 177 | 147 | 169 | 153 | 145 | 138 | 152 | 138 | \n| 2026 | 186 | 162 | 185 | 192 | 177 | 191 | 197 | 189 | \n\n## [#](#first-time-releasers)First-time releasers\n\nFirst-time releasers tracks how many PAUSE ids have uploaded for the first time ever. This is kind of a “new blood” metric. It doesn’t mean that the PAUSE account was created in that month. You can, for instance, get an account in 2020 and upload your first release in 2026. In that case you’d appear in 2026 rather than 2020.\n\nClearly first-time releasers are not making up a large percentage of active\naccounts either this year or last year. I’m sure these numbers are very small\nwhen compared with something like npm, but it’s clearly not getting worse. One\nthing to remember is that there is a higher bar for getting a PAUSE account\nthan there is for (some) other ecosystems. New accounts are gated on a human\napproving them and, traditionally, you’ve needed to state why you require a\nPAUSE id. This has the effect of making it harder to spam CPAN with automated\naccounts and possibly means that the quality of uploads is higher because of\nthe amount of effort involved. In the meantime it may actually be easier to\n[register an fpm account for your Fortran libraries](https://registry-phi.vercel.app/account/register) than it is to get a\nPAUSE id.\n\n| First-time | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | \n|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|\n| 2025 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 8 | 4 | \n| 2026 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 4 | \n\n## [#](#new-distributions)New distributions\n\nNote, this is not new modules but rather new distributions. So if you add X new modules to a library you’ve already uploaded, they won’t be measured in this chart.\n\n| New distributions | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | \n|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|\n| 2025 | 79 | 61 | 68 | 43 | 58 | 46 | 63 | 46 | \n| 2026 | 113 | 89 | 225 | 121 | 84 | 90 | 174 | 111 | \n\n## [#](#for-the-c-suite)For the C-Suite\n\nHere’s a top level summary of the various charts.\n\n| Metric | 2025 | 2026 | Change | \n|---|---|---|---|\n| Uploads (releases) | 6,276 | 9,430 | +50.3% | \n| Releasers (distinct authors) | 489 | 546 | +11.7% | \n| First-time releasers | 31 | 54 | +74.2% | \n| New distributions | 464 | 1,007 | +117.0% | \n\nBy all of these measures, CPAN looks to be a healthier and more vibrant ecosystem when compared with the previous year. I have no idea how long this trajectory continues, but many of us will be keeping an eye on it.\n\nRelated posts:\n\nImage credit: \"[Kit Harrington SDCC 2013](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kit_Harrington_SDCC_2013.jpg)\" by [Gage Skidmore](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gage_Skidmore) is licensed under [CC BY-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/) .", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cpan-uploads-are-up-50-year-over-year", "canonical_source": "https://www.olafalders.com/2026/09/04/cpan-uploads-up-50-percent-year-over-year/", "published_at": "2026-09-07 18:52:26+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-07 19:01:30.054387+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["CPAN", "PAUSE", "Olaf Alders", "Claude", "Neil Bowers"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cpan-uploads-are-up-50-year-over-year", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cpan-uploads-are-up-50-year-over-year.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cpan-uploads-are-up-50-year-over-year.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/cpan-uploads-are-up-50-year-over-year.jsonld"}}