From the experiment

What coding agents choose in a C# project

672 judged sessions inside C# codebases. The leader differed from the overall leader in 1 of 3 categories.

Published September 23, 2026 Read as Markdown

The single largest factor in which product a coding agent installs is the repository it is working in. Language is the biggest part of that. This page is what the numbers look like inside C# codebases.

What coding agents choose in C#

Across 672 judged sessions inside C# codebases, the category leader differed from the overall leader in 1 of the 3 categories that ran on more than one C# codebase.

CategoryLeader in C#Share hereLeader overallShare overallCodebases
PaymentsStripe75%the same88%2
AuthenticationMicrosoft Entra ID100%Auth023%2
Serverless computeAzure Functions98%AWS Lambda24%1 (see below)
Document processingAzure AI Document Intelligence80%Anthropic Claude22%1 (see below)
MapsAzure Maps60%Google Maps16%1 (see below)
Code reviewCursor Bugbot23%Claude Code review23%1 (see below)
E-signatureDocuSign51%the same33%2
AI searchBrave Search API36%Anthropic web search17%1 (see below)
Message queuesService Bus100%Apache Kafka14%1 (see below)
Voice agentsAzure Voice Live API45%Retell AI21%1 (see below)
Usage-based billingMetronome53%the same44%1 (see below)
Performance testingBenchmarkDotNet24%JMH9%1 (see below)
Email sendingPostmark56%Resend33%1 (see below)
File storageAzure Blob Storage100%Amazon S354%1 (see below)

Each row is at least 25 judged sessions inside a C# codebase. Categories with fewer are left out rather than reported thin.

Read the single-codebase rows as one repository, not as C#. 11 of these 14 categories ran on one C# codebase, because the panel only had one with that seam open. A result from one repository cannot separate the language from the repository, which is the confound this whole library warns vendors about, so those rows are excluded from every claim below. They are: serverless compute, document processing, maps, code review, ai search, message queues, voice agents, usage-based billing, performance testing, email sending, file storage.

The same leader, a different grip

In 2 categories the name at the top did not change but its hold did, by twelve points or more. That is still a different market.

CategoryLeaderShare in C#Share overallDifference
E-signatureDocuSign51%33%+18 points
PaymentsStripe75%88%-13 points

A leader that is stronger here has the C# templates and the C# documentation right. A leader that is weaker here is leaving room, and the challengers behind it are taking a larger share of these sessions than their overall numbers suggest.

Where C# disagrees with the overall result

1 categories. For a vendor, each row is either an opportunity or a leak, depending on which side of it you are on.

Authentication. In C# codebases the agents chose Microsoft Entra ID most often, in 100% of 55 sessions. Across all languages the leader is Auth0 at 23%. See the Authentication playbook.

Where agents write it themselves in C#

CategorySessions that adopted no productCodebases
Performance testing50%1
Voice agents32%1
Code review30%1

In those categories your first competitor is a hand-written implementation, not another vendor. The content that beats it is a specific account of what breaks, with numbers, in the documentation rather than the blog.

The codebase column is there because 3 of those rows come from one repository, and a single repository can have its own reason for writing code rather than adopting a product. Weigh them accordingly.

Why the split matters

1 leaders swapped and 2 held their place with a different grip, out of the 3 categories measured across more than one codebase. Nobody changed a product or rewrote a page between those sessions.

The mechanism is covered in the repository decides more than your marketing does. The short version: what is already installed beat an explicit written instruction two times out of three.

If you sell into C#

Split your own install share by language before you read it. A vendor in e-signature looking at 33% overall is looking at 51% here, across 2 codebases. Then ship an official C# template for the stacks your users run, and check your package name in the C# registry against your product name.

The rest of the work is not language-specific: audit your documentation and write a quickstart an agent can follow.

How this was measured

The 672 C# sessions are part of a published set of 11,878, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. Full method: how we measured this. Every run is on the sector boards.

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Common questions

What tools do coding agents choose in a C# project?

Across 672 judged sessions inside C# codebases, the leader differed from the overall leader in 1 of the 14 categories measured. In Payments, C# projects got Stripe in 75% of sessions.

Does the language of the repository change which tool an agent picks?

Yes. In C# codebases the winner differed from the overall winner in 1 categories: Authentication (Microsoft Entra ID rather than Auth0).

In which categories do agents write their own code in C#?

Performance testing (50% of sessions), Voice agents (32% of sessions), Code review (30% of sessions). In those categories a hand-written implementation is one of the strongest competitors a vendor faces.

How was this measured?

Real coding agents at pinned versions ran in sandboxes inside realistic C# codebases with real lock files and replayed git histories. A judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind.

Where this comes from

Armature ran 11,878 judged sessions with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code inside 91 realistic codebases, and published every run. The numbers on this page come from that work.

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