AtCoder Hits 800,000 Global Registrations for Programming Contests

AtCoder Surpasses 800,000 Global Registrations

In an impressive milestone, AtCoder Inc., headquartered in Shinjuku, Tokyo, has announced that its competitive programming contest platform, AtCoder, has crossed 800,000 registered users worldwide. Since 2016, AtCoder has been hosting regular programming contests in Japanese and English, attracting participants from various backgrounds, regardless of nationality, age, or gender. The platform has seen a notable increase in foreign registrations, outpacing the number of Japanese users since 2020. After surpassing 700,000 registrations in November 2024, the user base has grown by an additional 100,000 users in just about nine months.

The Rise of Competitive Programming with AI

The focus on competitive programming as a stage for implementing generative AI has surged in recent years. Participants increasingly utilize large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, to compete, with reports indicating that some participants exhibit skill levels equivalent to the blue to orange ratings on the AtCoder rating system. Recognizing these trends, AtCoder is committed to advancing AI technology while contributing to its societal implementation.

To facilitate this, AtCoder partnered with Sakana AI to develop the ALE-Bench (ALgorithm Engineering Benchmark), scheduled for launch in June 2025. This new benchmark is designed to evaluate the performance of algorithms developed by AI concerning combinatorial optimization problems typically tackled in heuristic contests. It aims to provide a quantitative evaluation framework for assessing the reasoning and exploration capabilities of AI, contributing to AI research advancements, which have been challenging to measure objectively thus far.

Additionally, during the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 held in July, an exhibition match sponsored by OpenAI showcased a competitive environment where AI and top-tier programmers competed under the same rules. This event garnered significant attention, providing a practical field to measure the optimization capability of AI algorithms, attracting interest from competitive programmers, researchers, and developers alike.

Continuing to Innovate and Expand

AtCoder continues to experience growth, supported by a vibrant community of users. The platform remains dedicated to enhancing the quality of programming contests, striving to offer more extensive services that encourage diverse participants from various nationalities, ages, and genders to engage in competitive programming.

As of now, AtCoder boasts 811,393 registered participants (including 329,372 Japanese users), with around 12,000 challengers participating in its regularly held contests each week. In addition to the contest platform, AtCoder operates the AtCoder Jobs service, which supports recruiting and job-seeking efforts by ranking participants in eight performance tiers, and the Algorithm Practical Test (PAST), evaluating IT personnel's programming skills.

For more information on the ALE-Bench release, please visit this link and for the OpenAI sponsorship announcement, view this link. AtCoder remains committed to enhancing services that cater to the competitive programming community and appreciates the support from its user base in this exciting journey.