The numbers are in, and they're unambiguous. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 80% of low-code platform users will come from outside IT departments. By 2024, 65% of all companies were already building with low-code. And Low-Code Application Platforms grew their market by 25% year-on-year in 2023, outpacing nearly every other segment in enterprise technology.
The forces driving this are structural, not cyclical: a global shortage of technical talent, relentless pressure to automate, and a growing recognition that waiting for IT to build everything is no longer a viable operating model. Low-code gives businesses a way out, faster development, lower costs, and applications that actually fit how the business works. Platforms like Ninox put that capability directly in the hands of the people closest to the work.
Low-code is no longer a trend, it's the default
The shift away from traditional development is accelerating. According to Gartner, the share of low-code users outside IT departments has been growing steadily and is projected to reach 80% by 2026, up from 60% in 2021. Business users with no technical background are taking development into their own hands, using visual editors and pre-built components to ship applications that would previously have required a developer queue.
Varsha Mehta, senior market research specialist at Gartner, framed the shift clearly: low-code technologies enable companies to reach the level of digital literacy that the modern, agile environment demands.
The KPMG study "Low-Code Adoption as a Driver of Digital Transformation," published in 2024, reinforces this. 81% of the companies surveyed now regard low-code as a core part of their strategic direction, not an experimental side project, but a pillar of how they plan to operate and compete.
How Gartner breaks down the low-code landscape
"Low-code" covers more ground than most people realize. Gartner segments the market into distinct categories: Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAP), Business Process Automation (BPA), Multi-Experience Development Platforms (MDXP), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), Citizen Automation and Development Platforms (CADP), and other low-code development technologies.
LCAPs are the fastest-growing segment by a significant margin. Gartner reports that LCAP providers generated close to ten billion dollars in revenue in 2023, representing roughly 25% growth over 2022. That growth rate is faster than most other areas of enterprise technology, and Gartner expects the trajectory to continue.
The platforms gaining the most traction are those that combine classic low-code development with automation capabilities like RPA and BPA. Businesses increasingly want solutions that don't just make development faster, they want platforms that improve the efficiency of existing workflows at the same time. Citizen Automation and Development Platforms, by contrast, are growing at the slowest pace in the segment.
Why the boom is structural, not speculative
Gartner projects that around three-quarters of all new applications will be built using low-code technologies by 2026. Two forces are driving this: automation pressure and a talent shortage that shows no sign of resolving.
The numbers on the talent side are stark. Despite the IT workforce growing steadily, Statista reported 19,600 people working in software development in Germany in 2023, with projections of 1.2 million by end of 2025, the gap between supply and demand remains wide. In 2020, 70% of German companies identified IT staff shortages as a significant problem, with around 86,000 positions going unfilled.
Jason Wong, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, put it directly: high costs for technical professionals and an increasingly distributed workforce will drive greater adoption of low-code technologies.
Low-code platforms resolve this tension without waiting for the talent market to catch up. Companies can build highly functional, custom applications using citizen developers from their own teams, people who understand the business processes deeply but don't write code. Time-to-market drops. Costs drop. And the applications built are more likely to fit the work because the people building them are the ones doing it.
What this means for how you build
The concept Gartner's Wong calls the "composable enterprise" captures the strategic opportunity here. Instead of forcing your business processes into the constraints of off-the-shelf software, low-code lets you combine modules and configure systems that map precisely to how you operate. When requirements change, you adapt the software rather than adapting your workflow.
Ninox is built around this model. Customers build custom, flexible applications on Ninox every day, extending and adapting them without programming knowledge, as fast as the business demands. According to Forrester, low-code development can be up to ten times faster than traditional programming. With Ninox, that speed advantage comes without sacrificing the depth and specificity that makes software genuinely useful.
The platform grows with your business rather than requiring a re-platforming decision every time your needs evolve. And because the people closest to the work can build and modify their own tools, the bottleneck of IT dependency disappears.
The window for early movers is still open
The low-code adoption curve is steep, but it's not finished. Companies that move now build institutional capability in low-code development while the competitive gap is still meaningful. They develop faster, spend less on custom development, and create operations that adapt to change rather than breaking under it.
The talent shortage isn't going away. The pressure to automate isn't going away. And the expectation that software fits the business, not the other way around, isn't going away either. Low-code is the answer the market has already decided on. The only question left is how quickly your business gets there.
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