Across 45 freelance developer profiles, Flutter is the most listed skill at 42 percent, ahead of React at 27. The median profile lists seven skills. And 107 of the 154 distinct skills named are named by exactly one person, which is the number that should change how you write yours.
Counted from Shipfolks on 28 July 2026. Small sample, self-reported, and it describes the people who joined this directory rather than the profession. That limit is real, but the shape of the distribution is still worth looking at, because it is the same shape you are competing inside.
The top of the list
| # | Skill | Profiles | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Flutter | 19 | 42% |
| 2 | Firebase | 14 | 31% |
| 3 | Android | 12 | 27% |
| 4 | React | 12 | 27% |
| 5 | React Native | 10 | 22% |
| 6 | Supabase | 10 | 22% |
| 7 | iOS | 10 | 22% |
| 8 | Swift | 9 | 20% |
| 9 | Kotlin | 9 | 20% |
| 10 | Next.js | 8 | 18% |
Two things stand out.
Flutter leads React, which is not what the general developer surveys would predict. It follows from the mobile skew in what people here actually ship, and it is a reminder that the independent market has its own shape rather than mirroring the employed one.
Backend-as-a-service is everywhere. Firebase at 31 percent and Supabase at 22 percent means over half of these profiles name a managed backend. For solo builders shipping fast, that is the rational choice, and it tells you what a client is likely to end up with.
The number that matters more: the long tail
- 154 distinct skills across 45 profiles
- 107 of them named by exactly one person
- 31 named by three or more people
- Median 7 skills per profile, mean 7.6, most anyone lists is 12
Seven in ten skills on this site are named by one person.
That is the whole competitive picture in one line. If you list React, you are one of twelve. If you list the specific thing you know that nobody else here does, you are the only result. Both of those facts are on the same page, and most people optimise for the wrong one.
More skills is not better
The median is seven. The maximum anyone lists is twelve.
A list of twelve says something different from what people intend. It does not read as "highly capable", it reads as "has not decided", and a client trying to work out whether you are the right person for their React Native app has to hunt for the relevant entry among eleven irrelevant ones.
Four skills plus three shipped projects is a stronger profile than twelve skills and one. The skills say what you claim; the projects say what you finished. Only one of those can be checked in ninety seconds, and that is the one a client checks first.
The gap between listed and shipped
Here is the uncomfortable one. Cross-referencing the skill lists against the projects people actually have live:
- 33 profiles list at least one mobile skill
- 28 of those have at least one mobile project live
- 5 list a mobile stack and have shipped nothing on it here
Five out of thirty-three is not an epidemic, and there are innocent explanations: work under NDA, an app pulled from a store, something built for an employer that cannot be shown.
But a client cannot see the innocent explanation. They see a skill claimed and no evidence of it, and the reasonable conclusion from the outside is the unflattering one. If you list a stack you cannot show, either ship something small in it or say in your bio why the work is not visible. One sentence closes the gap.
What to do with this
- Cut the list to what you want to be hired for. Seven is the median; that is a reasonable ceiling, not a target to beat.
- Keep the entry that makes you a category of one. Seven in ten skills here are unique to one person, and that is where being findable comes from.
- Make sure everything you list has something behind it. A skill with a shipped project attached is a claim. A skill on its own is an assertion.
- Do not chase the top of the table. Flutter being the most listed skill is not a reason to learn Flutter. It is a reason to know that if you list it, you are one of nineteen, and something else on your profile has to do the differentiating.
If your list is longer than your evidence, the fix is on the projects side rather than the skills side: how to build a portfolio with no experience covers what actually counts as a project and why finished beats impressive.
We will re-run these counts as the numbers grow. The one to watch is whether Flutter holds its lead, or whether it is an artefact of who arrived first.