Apparatus, systems, articles of manufacture, and methods for a context and complexity-aware recommendation system for efficient software development. An example apparatus includes a current state generator to generate a representation of a current state of a new function, an instruction predictor to generate a first recommended software component based on the current state of the new function, a complexity cost determiner to rank the first recommended software component based on a weighted sum of associated partial cost values, the software component to be ranked against second recommended software components based on a comparison of partial cost values corresponding to respective ones of the second recommended software components, a risk identifier to detect vulnerabilities based on an attack surface of a portion of the first recommended software component, and a ranking determiner to generate a third recommended software component, the third recommended software component corresponding to respective ranking metrics.