EtherCAT Reaches 88 Million Nodes: Strong Growth Despite Difficult Market Conditions

Summary

NUREMBERG, Germany - April 3, 2025 - The EtherCAT success story continues: The EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) now reports around 88 million EtherCAT nodes in the field worldwide. And even if the pace of growth in recent years could not be maintained due to the current global economic climate and the after-effects of chip overstocking, the result is impressive: another 11 million EtherCAT nodes were added in 2024–an outstanding result in a challenging business environment.

These node figures are very reliable as they are based on actual chip sales, which are reported by the chip manufacturers to Beckhoff Automation, the inventor of EtherCAT technology. “And they have no interest in exaggerating these figures, as this would entail additional costs for them,” explained Martin Rostan, executive director of the EtherCAT Technology Group. With EtherCAT, the technology license is included directly in the chip, so there are no additional license fees for device manufacturers and users. Beckhoff uses the license revenue to finance the activities of the EtherCAT Technology Group and thus the ecosystem surrounding the technology.

The number of FPGA-based EtherCAT devices, which can only be estimated, remains an uncertain factor when calculating the number of nodes. “We assume that these implementations make up around 10% of the total number. The figure is probably even higher, but we are being deliberately conservative in our estimate,” continued Rostan. Multi-protocol chips are also taken into account, but only proportionally in relation to the market share of EtherCAT at the respective manufacturers.

Despite continued global economic challenges, EtherCAT remains on course for robust growth and reasserts its leading position in industrial communication with the publication of these latest node figures.

About EtherCAT Technology Group

The EtherCAT Technology Group is an organization in which key user companies from various industries and leading automation suppliers join forces to support, promote and advance the EtherCAT technology. With over 8,100 members from 76 countries the EtherCAT Technology Group has become the largest fieldbus organization in the world. Founded in November 2003, it is also the fastest growing fieldbus organization.

About EtherCAT

EtherCAT is the Industrial Ethernet technology which stands for high-performance, low-cost, easy to use with a flexible topology. It was introduced in 2003 and has been an international IEC standard and a SEMI standard since 2007. EtherCAT is an open technology: anyone can implement or use it.