CNCF DevStats 2025: Japan’s Contributions to Cloud Native Projects

Have you ever heard of CNCF’s DevStats? It is a tool that tracks and quantifies all contribution activities within CNCF projects by pulling data from GitHub.

Introduction to DevStats

Using DevStats data, we can analyze ongoing development in CNCF projects from multiple perspectives. One of the key metrics is “Contribution,” which measures activities such as reviews, comments, commits, issues, and pull requests.

2025 DevStats Data for Japan

In this post, we examine the 2025 DevStats data for Japan, focusing particularly on individual achievements. Let’s take a look back at the impact Japanese engineers made over the past year.

Comparing with 2024

We ran a similar report last year and shared it on our blog. Since this is our second year doing this, let’s start with a quick overview of how things have changed.

Japan’s CNCF DevStats 2024 showed that the projects receiving the most Japanese contributions haven’t changed much, which shows that our community’s areas of interest remain consistent.

Top 10 Contributors in CNCF Projects

Here are the top contributors for the five CNCF Graduated projects that have the most Japanese participants.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes involves many activities that aren’t strictly code, such as translations. Because of this, we have separated the data into two categories: the main kubernetes/kubernetes repository and the entire organization.

• sanposhiho has shown incredible influence here, reaching a combined score of over 1,000 across their entries.
• tenzen-y took the top spot with a remarkable score, just as they did last year.

Fluentd

Fluentd continues to be a project where Japanese presence is felt most strongly. Last year, we saw several people break the 1,000-point mark, and that momentum continued into 2025.

• daipom, kenhys, and cosmo0920 all maintained high scores between 1,000 and 1,500.

Containerd

In 2024, akihirosuda set a world-class record with a score of 4,392. While that number settled to 2,991 in 2025, he remains the undisputed leader in this space.

Cilium

Cilium saw a lot of excitement in 2024 right after its graduation, and we saw several Japanese names in the rankings. In 2025, that work has continued steadily, led by yutarohayakawa and ysksuzuki.

Envoy

Japanese contributions to Envoy increased substantially in 2025, reaching nearly 400 points and earning it a spot in our report.

Overall Top 20 in CNCF

Finally, here are the top 20 Japanese contributors across the entire CNCF ecosystem.

Conclusion

Building on the first set of data from 2024, this second year of reporting has allowed us to see how the landscape is shifting. While the number of contributors has declined slightly, the core community is becoming stronger and more diverse.

Every small act, whether it’s a code review, fixing a typo in documentation, or commenting on an issue, is a real contribution. We look forward to seeing even more names on this list next year as Japan’s presence in the cloud-native ecosystem continues to grow.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is CNCF DevStats? CNCF DevStats is a tool that tracks and quantifies all contribution activities within CNCF projects by pulling data from GitHub.
2. What are the top CNCF projects with Japanese contributions? The top CNCF projects with Japanese contributions are Kubernetes, Fluentd, Containerd, Cilium, and Envoy.
3. How can I contribute to CNCF projects? You can contribute to CNCF projects by participating in code reviews, fixing typos in documentation, commenting on issues, and more.
4. What is the significance of DevStats? DevStats provides a quantitative measure of the amount of work being done on a project, allowing us to analyze ongoing development in CNCF projects from multiple perspectives.
5. How can I get involved in the cloud-native ecosystem? You can get involved in the cloud-native ecosystem by attending events like KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan, participating in online communities, and contributing to CNCF projects.