Most of them are reachable another way, and the gap is smaller than tools report. Among the 82,723 developers in our index who pushed code in the last ninety days and whose location is known, 32,703 publish an email address. Another 17,839 publish a LinkedIn profile and no email, which is 55% more people on top of what email alone reaches. Beyond those two, a personal site or blog linked from the profile often carries a contact page, and some developers list a handle for a platform they prefer. What you should not do is dig the address out of their git commit history: it is public because git records the author of every commit, not because they chose to publish it.
The number tools do not report
A tool that returns email addresses reports email coverage, and that number is real. It is also not the number you care about, which is how many of the people you found you can reach at all.
Measured on the population a recruiter actually works with, 82,723 developers who are still active and whose location is known, the two numbers diverge sharply. 32,703 publish an email. 17,839 publish a LinkedIn profile and no email. Counting only the first understates what is reachable by 55%, and the people it drops are not a random sample: they skew towards developers who keep a deliberately quiet GitHub profile, which is not the same as developers who do not want to be contacted.
Figures in this page come from StarHunt's own index of 275,000+ public GitHub profiles, measured in September 2026. Method and full breakdown: State of Developer Reachability 2026.
The routes that exist, ranked by how well they work
- The LinkedIn profile linked from GitHub. The strongest fallback, because the person put the link there themselves. It is a connection request or an InMail, so it is slower than email and it works.
- The personal site or blog in the profile. Very often has a contact page, an address in the footer, or a form. A developer who runs a blog is usually happy to be written to about their writing.
- A handle for another platform. Some profiles list one. If someone tells you where they prefer to be reached, that is where to reach them.
- Nothing at all. A real category, and a legitimate signal. Someone who publishes no route in any field has answered the question.
The route to avoid, and why
Every public commit exposes the author's email. It is the obvious workaround and it is the one that gets recruiters treated as scrapers.
That address is in public history as a technical consequence of how git identifies commits. GitHub offers a noreply address specifically so that developers can keep it out, which tells you what the expectation is. Writing to a commit address announces that you went looking for something the person did not offer, and the first line of your message no longer matters.
What to do with the difference
The practical consequence is about sequencing, not about volume. Work the email-reachable people first, because the channel is faster and the reply comes back in the same place. Keep the LinkedIn-only people in the same shortlist rather than in a second-tier list, because nothing about their work is weaker; only their published contact route differs.
And when a tool tells you it found a hundred matching developers, ask how many of them it can reach and by which route. The two numbers are usually not the same one.
Where this answer does not hold
A share of developers publish no route at all, and no tool should pretend otherwise. Third-party enrichment can often produce a work address by guessing a company email pattern; that is a different activity from using published data, with its own compliance profile, and it is not what this page recommends.
Frequently asked questions
What share of GitHub developers publish an email?
Across our whole index, 37% publish an email or a LinkedIn profile. Among the 82,723 who are active and locatable, 32,703 publish an email and 17,839 publish a LinkedIn profile with no email.
How much does LinkedIn add on top of email?
55% more people, measured on active and locatable developers. A tool that returns addresses only is not returning the whole reachable pool.
Can I use the email from someone's git commits?
You should not. It is exposed because git records a commit author, not because the person published it as a contact address, and GitHub provides a noreply address so it can stay private.
Is it worth contacting someone through their blog?
Often, yes. A developer who maintains a blog and a contact page put both there on purpose, and a message that references what they wrote lands better than a generic one sent to an address you found elsewhere.
See the email and the LinkedIn, not one of the two
Every profile carries whichever public route the developer chose to publish.
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