After ten years of being developed, ggplot2 has continued to make an impact on the data visualization community: it has had over 10 million downloads, up to 400,000 downloads in a given month, and is used by data scientists from the US government to journalists at the ''[[The New York Times]]'' to analyze and present data.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Kopf |first=Dan |date=2017-06-18 |title=All hail ggplot2—The code powering all those excellent charts is 10 years old |url=https://qz.com/1007328/all-hail-ggplot2-the-code-powering-all-those-excellent-charts-is-10-years-old |access-date=2025-05-13 |website=Quartz |language=en}}</ref> Wickham posits the success of ggplot2 comes from the increased popularity of the R language and the relative ease of making aesthetically appealing graphics. Along with more serious uses of ggplot2, Wickham also supports the more unusual use cases, like exploring factors for winning in the reality TV show [[RuPaul's Drag Race]].<ref name=":0" />
