Even though there are a million DevRel metrics dashboards out there, we've somehow grown numb to what they're actually measuring. In the race to justify our existence, we've collectively forgotten what success looks like when it's not tied to a bull market. When money flows and everyone's buying, vanity metrics feel fine. When budgets tighten and deals slow down, those same metrics become indefensible.
Let's get real about what matters.
The activity trap
I've seen it too many times. A DevRel team ends the quarter with an impressive activity wheel - 30 talks given, 50,000 page views, 15 blog posts published, a dozen YouTube videos, and a conference sponsorship. Leadership sees movement. The team feels productive. Everyone's exhausted.
Then someone asks: "How many developers created accounts this quarter? How many moved from trial to paid? What's our developer-to-customer conversion rate?"
Silence.
The activity wheel spins, but nothing converts. The team was busy, not strategic. They optimized for outputs, not outcomes.
This isn't a criticism of DevRel practitioners. It's a systems problem. When the market is rich and growth is easy, activity loosely correlates with success because rising tides lift all boats. Companies tolerate vanity metrics because revenue grows regardless. But when the market contracts, executives need to see the connection between your work and ARR. And vanity metrics can't make that case.
The economics reality
When developers don't buy, your metrics need to explain why - or prove you're solving the problem. Page views and talk counts don't do that. They measure distribution and visibility, which are inputs, not outcomes.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: DevRel should impact ARR. Not in the same way sales does, but meaningfully and measurably. If your DevRel program can't show how it accelerates developer confidence, reduces churn, or increases expansion, you're going to struggle to justify headcount when budgets get tight.
This is extremely hard to measure. But it's achievable if you focus on the right goals.
What to measure instead
DevRel success is measured by how quickly a developer goes from confused to confident, and how little they need us once they're there.
A shorter version that works well in executive conversations: less friction, faster first win, fewer questions, better questions.
Let's break that down into practical metrics that correlate with real outcomes.
1. Friction reduction
Friction is the enemy of adoption. Every unnecessary step, unclear concept, or undocumented edge case slows developers down and increases the likelihood they'll churn before they see value.
Key signals to track:
- Time to first meaningful success - how long from signup to completing their first real task, not a toy example
- Drop-off points in onboarding - where do developers abandon the flow
- Number of steps required to complete core workflows
- Support tickets per 100 active developers
- Repeated questions in community channels
If developers keep asking the same questions, friction exists, regardless of how polished your documentation looks on the surface. Repetition signals a gap between what you think you've explained and what developers actually understand.
2. Onboarding speed and clarity
Fast onboarding is one of the highest leverage DevRel investments. The faster a developer reaches their first win, the more likely they are to stay.
Metrics to track:
- Time to first API call or first deploy
- Percentage of users who complete the quickstart without human help
- Day one and day seven return rates
- Bounce rate on onboarding documentation
- Copy-paste success rate for getting started examples
Great DevRel teams obsess over the first 30 minutes of the developer journey. That's where trust is built or lost.
3. Error quality and debuggability
Error messages are part of the developer experience. If your product throws cryptic errors that require support intervention to decode, you're creating friction at scale.
Strong indicators of good error handling:
- Errors explain what went wrong in plain language
- Errors suggest how to fix the issue
- Errors link directly to relevant documentation
- Fewer support tickets that start with error screenshots
- Reduced rage quits after failed setup attempts
If a developer can recover from an error without asking for help, DevRel has succeeded. If they have to open a ticket or post in a forum to understand what broke, you've failed them.
4. Developer confidence
Confidence is the most important and least visible metric. You can't measure it directly, but you can approximate it through behavior.
Signals to watch:
- Second session return rate - do they come back after the first attempt
- Depth of feature usage over time - are they exploring beyond the basics
- Fewer validation-seeking questions like "am I doing this right"
- More advanced questions appearing earlier in the journey
- Developers helping other developers in the community
Confident developers explore without permission and without fear. They try things, break things, and figure things out. When developers don't feel confident, they stop experimenting and start asking for approval on every decision.
5. Feedback loop health
DevRel should act as a two-way conduit between developers and the product organization. You're not just evangelizing outward - you're feeding critical intelligence back into the product team.
Measure feedback loop effectiveness:
- Number of product changes driven by developer feedback
- Time from feedback to visible action or response
- Frequency of DevRel input in PRDs and roadmap discussions
- Issues closed because DevRel surfaced them early
When feedback loops are healthy, DevRel becomes a product multiplier. You catch friction before it scales, influence the roadmap toward developer needs, and close the gap between what the product team thinks developers want and what they actually need.
6. Trust and credibility
Trust compounds over time and protects your product during rough edges. If developers trust you, they tolerate imperfections and give you feedback instead of churning silently. If they don't trust you, no amount of content will save adoption.
Signals to watch:
- Unprompted recommendations from developers in public forums
- Community members answering each other's questions without prompting
- Honest public conversations, including constructive criticism
- Strong engagement on deep technical content, not just hype pieces
Trust isn't built through marketing. It's built through consistency, honesty, and technical credibility. When your DevRel team admits mistakes, acknowledges limitations, and solves real problems instead of papering over them, developers notice.
Metrics that look good but lie
These metrics are often reported in DevRel dashboards but rarely correlate with real success:
- Page views
- Social impressions
- Talk count
- Newsletter signups without activation
- GitHub stars without corresponding usage
These are distribution metrics, not outcome metrics. They tell you whether people saw your content, not whether your content changed their behavior or improved their experience.
Distribution matters, but only if it leads to outcomes. If 50,000 people saw your tutorial but nobody successfully completed it, you didn't help 50,000 developers. You wasted 50,000 opportunities.
How to use this framework
Use these metrics to:
- Align DevRel with product and DX teams around shared outcomes
- Justify investments in onboarding improvements, tooling, and documentation
- Shift leadership conversations away from awareness and toward business impact
- Build dashboards that reflect real developer success, not team activity
DevRel is not a megaphone. It's a system that reduces friction, builds confidence, and earns trust. When you measure those outcomes instead of inputs, you can finally answer the hard question: "How does DevRel contribute to ARR?"
The answer is this: you make it easier for developers to succeed, faster for them to see value, and less likely they'll churn before they convert. That's measurable. That's defensible. And in a market that's not handing out growth for free, that's what leadership needs to see.
Frequently asked questions
Why are traditional DevRel metrics like page views and talk counts considered vanity metrics?
These metrics measure activity and distribution, not outcomes. They tell you how busy your team looks but not whether developers are actually succeeding with your product. In a bull market, activity correlates loosely with growth because everyone's buying anyway. When budgets tighten, executives need to see the connection between DevRel and revenue, and vanity metrics can't make that case.
How can DevRel teams start measuring friction reduction effectively?
Start by instrumenting your onboarding flow and measuring time to first meaningful success, drop-off points, and repeated questions in support channels. Track support tickets per 100 active developers as a ratio metric. The key is identifying where developers get stuck and measuring whether your interventions actually reduce that friction over time.
What's the difference between DevRel activity and DevRel outcomes?
Activity is what your team does - talks given, docs written, videos published. Outcomes are what happens to developers as a result - faster onboarding, higher confidence, better error recovery, increased feature adoption. At the end of a quarter, activity shows you were busy. Outcomes show you moved the business forward.
Can DevRel really impact ARR, or is that just a sales responsibility?
DevRel absolutely impacts ARR, but indirectly. When developers onboard faster, hit fewer blockers, recover from errors without support, and gain confidence quickly, they're more likely to move from trial to paid, expand usage, and recommend your product. The challenge is proving the connection with data rather than anecdotes, which requires tracking leading indicators like time to first win and correlating them with conversion and expansion metrics.
How should DevRel teams present these metrics to leadership?
Frame metrics around business outcomes executives care about. Instead of "we published 20 tutorials," say "we reduced time to first API call by 40%, correlating with a 15% increase in trial-to-paid conversion." Use the shorthand "less friction, faster first win, fewer questions, better questions" to anchor conversations. Show how DevRel acts as a product multiplier by identifying friction early and influencing the roadmap.
