Freelance Future: Top Tech Skills to Master by 2025!

Malt, a platform dedicated to freelancing, has released its Tech Trends 2025 report, which examines major technology trends noted on its platform between 2023 and 2024. The study relies on job postings by companies and profiles of registered freelancers, focusing on technical fields. Explore the tech priorities of European companies.

Technical Skills Sought After by Recruiters

Significant Growth in No-code and Low-code

By 2025, WordPress continues to dominate the market, being used by 43.2% of websites globally. Unsurprisingly, skills in this CMS are highly sought after. Between 2023 and 2024, the demand for WordPress-based solutions rose by 42%. Another favored tool among businesses is FlutterFlow, a low-code visual development platform for creating mobile and web applications, which saw a demand increase of 270%.

The popularity of these platforms is based on their low-code/no-code functionalities, which have seen a project demand increase of 40%, according to Malt. FlutterFlow also benefits from its drag-and-drop component system.

Popular Programming Languages in Projects

What about programming languages? According to Malt, Python “stands out as the most dynamic programming language,” with a demand increase of 35% over two years. The language, leading the TIOBE index since October 2021, is favored for its simplicity, extensive libraries, and utility in AI project development.

Other languages also show marked interest, such as Go, which saw a 40% increase in demand between 2023 and 2024, reaching the same level of demand as C++. Conversely, despite a growth in adoption rate among developers, Rust remains underutilized in projects.

Shifting JavaScript Ecosystem

React.js solidifies its leading position in 2025 for front-end development. A JavaScript library developed by Meta, React is widely adopted for creating single-page interactive web interfaces (SPA). It significantly outpaces Angular in terms of demand, supported by a lightweight architecture, superior performance, and a broad ecosystem of libraries.

At the same time, Node.js continues to rise in popularity. Companies appreciate it for the speed of its development cycles and greater flexibility. This trend contributes to a relative decline in “pure” JavaScript: the focus is now on specific frameworks and runtime environments.

Developing Computer Skills

Supply and Demand Not Always Aligned

The report highlights numerous discrepancies between the skills displayed by freelancers and those favored in freelancing projects. Malt points out that “60% of the most sought-after skills are present on both the freelancers’ and companies’ sides, while 40% do not overlap,” with an even larger gap when looking at rapidly growing skills.

HTML and JavaScript remain the top skills among freelancers, but the demand for these skills has decreased by 33% and 36%, respectively. On the company side, the most demanded skills are React.js and Python, which have seen growth of 27% and 9% respectively. Yet, they rank only 7th and 5th on the freelance supply side, with minimal or no growth.

Among the company demands under-invested by freelancers are those for React.js (+27% over a year) and Python (+9%), which have seen almost no growth among independents.

Do Freelancers Have an Edge in AI?

In the realm of AI, the report reveals an interesting trend: freelancers seem to be ahead of companies, training in skills that are yet not widely demanded in projects, particularly related to LLM (+97% compared to 2023) and GenAI techniques (+58%). Malt summarizes: “Both companies and freelancers are fully aware that AI is here to stay. Currently, companies are investing in strengthening the basics—AI, low-code, data, and cloud—to be able to scale up when the time comes. Freelancers, on the other hand, are already a step ahead, focusing on more advanced AI skills.”

Technologies from OpenAI remain highly favored by companies, accounting for 82% of total searches on Malt. However, competing players such as Gemini, Claude, or Llama are making progress. The most notable growth is seen in Mistral (demand multiplied by eight), which offers better guarantees in terms of sovereignty.

Training to Master AI