by
I see the same WordPress statistics copied from one article to the next, and most of them are out of date. “WordPress powers 43% of the web” is still everywhere, even though it stopped being true early this year.
That matters when you pitch WordPress to a client, pick a platform for a new site or write about the market. One stale number makes the rest of your argument easy to dismiss.
So here is the current picture. WordPress runs 39.6% of all websites and 58.3% of sites that use a CMS, according to W3Techs on October 26, 2026. That is down from its peak of 43.6% on January 1, 2025.
The drop is real, but Shopify and Wix barely moved during it. The lost share went to sites where W3Techs can’t detect any CMS at all.
Every chart below has its exact figures in a table right under it, so you can copy the number you need.
Key WordPress Statistics
If you only need the headline WordPress statistics for 2026, these are the ones I’d use:
- WordPress runs 39.6% of all websites as of October 26, 2026.
- That’s 58.3% of the CMS market, more than 7 times the share of Shopify, the next platform.
- The all-time high was 43.6% on January 1, 2025. The share has fallen every month of 2026.
- 71.3% of WordPress sites that report to WordPress.org run version 7.x.
- 33.8% of WordPress sites still run PHP 8.1 or older, which no longer gets security fixes.
- The plugin directory lists about 72,600 free plugins and the theme directory lists 8,775 themes.
- Patchstack logged 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025, up 42% from 2024. Only 6 were in WordPress core.
- 48.3% of WordPress sites pass Core Web Vitals on mobile, against 76.2% of Shopify sites.
- WooCommerce runs on 7.8% of all websites and about 4.3 million live stores.
WordPress Market Share
WordPress runs 39.6% of all websites, which is 58.3% of the CMS market. Shopify comes next at 5.3% of websites, so WordPress is still more than 7 times bigger than its closest rival.
There is one catch in the first number. About a third of websites use no CMS that W3Techs can detect, so a share of all websites moves even when no platform gains or loses users.
- Share of all websites
- Share of CMS market
| CMS | Share of all websites | Share of CMS market |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 39.6 | 58.3 |
| Shopify | 5.3 | 7.9 |
| Wix | 4.2 | 6.2 |
| Squarespace | 2.4 | 3.6 |
| Joomla | 1.1 | 1.6 |
| Tilda | 0.8 | 1.2 |
| Webflow | 0.8 | 1.2 |
| Duda | 0.7 | 1.1 |
| Drupal | 0.6 | 0.9 |
| GoDaddy Website Builder | 0.6 | 0.9 |
WordPress also holds up among the busiest websites. W3Techs splits its data by traffic rank, and WordPress keeps about half of the CMS market at every level.
| Site segment | WordPress share of CMS-using sites |
|---|---|
| All websites | 58.3 |
| Top 1 million | 48.2 |
| Top 100000 | 50.5 |
| Top 10000 | 50.8 |
| Top 1000 | 50.7 |
The top 1 million is the weakest band at 48.2%. I think that’s where custom stacks and enterprise platforms cluster, but W3Techs doesn’t publish a breakdown that proves it.
WordPress Market Share Over Time
WordPress grew every year from 2015 to 2022. Its share went from 23.3% of all websites on January 1, 2015 to 43.2% on January 1, 2022.
Then the growth stopped. The share stayed between 43.1% and 43.6% for 3 years before it started falling in 2026.
- WordPress
- No detectable CMS
- Shopify
- Wix
| Year | WordPress | Shopify | Wix | Squarespace | Joomla | Drupal | No detectable CMS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 23.3 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 3.3 | 2 | 61.7 |
| 2016 | 25.6 | 0.4 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 3.3 | 2.1 | 56.6 |
| 2017 | 27.3 | 0.6 | 0.3 | 0.5 | 3.4 | 2.2 | 53.3 |
| 2018 | 29.2 | 0.9 | 0.4 | 0.7 | 3.2 | 2.3 | 51.3 |
| 2019 | 32.7 | 1.4 | 1 | 1.4 | 3 | 1.9 | 45.3 |
| 2020 | 35.4 | 1.9 | 1.3 | 1.5 | 2.6 | 1.7 | 43.1 |
| 2021 | 39.5 | 3.2 | 1.5 | 1.4 | 2.2 | 1.5 | 38.3 |
| 2022 | 43.2 | 4.4 | 1.9 | 1.8 | 1.7 | 1.3 | 33.8 |
| 2023 | 43.1 | 3.8 | 2.4 | 2 | 1.8 | 1.2 | 32.3 |
| 2024 | 43.1 | 4.1 | 2.6 | 2.1 | 1.7 | 1.1 | 31.4 |
| 2025 | 43.6 | 4.7 | 3.3 | 2.2 | 1.6 | 0.9 | 29.6 |
| 2026 | 43 | 5 | 4.2 | 2.4 | 1.3 | 0.8 | 28.6 |
| Oct 2026 | 39.6 | 5.3 | 4.2 | 2.4 | 1.1 | 0.6 | 32.1 |
The dashed line shows sites with no detectable CMS. It fell from 61.7% to 28.6% while WordPress climbed, because most new sites in those years picked a CMS. In 2026 that line turned up for the first time in the series.
W3Techs’ yearly series starts in 2015. For earlier years, its own milestone posts are the record I trust, such as the 25% milestone in November 2015:
| Date | Milestone | Share of all websites (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 23, 2013 | 1 in 5 websites | 20 |
| Nov 9, 2015 | 1 in 4 websites | 25 |
| Mar 5, 2019 | 1 in 3 websites | 33.3 |
| Jan 1, 2022 | First reading above 43% | 43.2 |
| Jan 1, 2025 | All-time peak | 43.6 |
| Oct 26, 2026 | Latest reading | 39.6 |
Figures for 2011 to 2014 that circulate online, such as “13.1% in 2011”, don’t trace back to a W3Techs page that is still available, so I have left them out.
Is WordPress Losing Market Share?
Yes. WordPress lost 3.4 percentage points in the first 10 months of 2026, from 43.0% to 39.6% of all websites. That is the steepest fall in W3Techs’ data since 2015, and it came after 3 flat years.
- WordPress
- No detectable CMS
- Shopify
| Month | WordPress | Shopify | Wix | No detectable CMS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2025 | 43.3 | 4.8 | 4.1 | 28.6 |
| Nov 2025 | 43.2 | 4.9 | 4.1 | 28.6 |
| Dec 2025 | 43.2 | 4.9 | 4.1 | 28.6 |
| Jan 2026 | 43 | 5 | 4.2 | 28.6 |
| Feb 2026 | 42.8 | 5.1 | 4.2 | 28.6 |
| Mar 2026 | 42.7 | 5.1 | 4.2 | 28.8 |
| Apr 2026 | 42.5 | 5.1 | 4.3 | 28.9 |
| May 2026 | 42.2 | 5.2 | 4.3 | 29.2 |
| Jun 2026 | 41.9 | 5.2 | 4.3 | 29.5 |
| Jul 2026 | 41.5 | 5.2 | 4.3 | 29.9 |
| Aug 2026 | 41.2 | 5.3 | 4.3 | 30.4 |
| Sep 2026 | 40.7 | 5.3 | 4.2 | 30.9 |
| Oct 2026 | 40.2 | 5.4 | 4.2 | 31.5 |
| Oct 26, 2026 | 39.6 | 5.3 | 4.2 | 32.1 |
Shopify gained 0.3 points over the same period and Wix gained nothing. The share of sites with no detectable CMS rose 3.5 points, almost exactly what WordPress lost. So most of the sites that left WordPress, or never chose it, don’t show up as another CMS.
There are 3 likely reasons, and W3Techs doesn’t publish enough detail to say which one matters most:
- AI-built sites. Tools such as Lovable and v0 generate a site as code. W3Techs now tracks both, at 0.3% and 0.1% of websites.
- Headless front ends. A site can keep WordPress as its backend and serve pages from another framework, which often hides WordPress from a crawler. I explained that setup in how to use WordPress as a headless CMS.
- Sample changes. W3Techs surveys a ranked sample of popular websites. When the sites in that sample change, every share moves with them.
I think WordPress is losing the small, simple sites first. Brochure sites and landing pages are exactly the work AI builders and site generators handle well, and those sites never needed much of a CMS.
Other trackers measure differently but agree on the size of the lead. The HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025 found WordPress on 64.3% of mobile sites that use a CMS, from data collected in July 2025.
Among sites that use a CMS, WordPress peaked earlier, at 65.2% on January 1, 2022. Wix has gained share every year since, and Shopify has gained in every year but 2023.
- WordPress
- Shopify
- Wix
| Year | WordPress | Shopify | Wix | Squarespace | Joomla | Drupal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 60.7 | 0.7 | 0.3 | 0.5 | 8.6 | 5.1 |
| 2016 | 58.8 | 1 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 7.5 | 4.9 |
| 2017 | 58.5 | 1.3 | 0.6 | 1.1 | 7.2 | 4.8 |
| 2018 | 60 | 1.8 | 0.9 | 1.5 | 6.5 | 4.6 |
| 2019 | 59.7 | 2.6 | 1.8 | 2.6 | 5.4 | 3.5 |
| 2020 | 62.1 | 3.4 | 2.3 | 2.7 | 4.6 | 3 |
| 2021 | 64.1 | 5.2 | 2.4 | 2.3 | 3.6 | 2.5 |
| 2022 | 65.2 | 6.6 | 2.9 | 2.7 | 2.6 | 2 |
| 2023 | 63.7 | 5.7 | 3.6 | 3 | 2.7 | 1.8 |
| 2024 | 62.9 | 6 | 3.8 | 3 | 2.5 | 1.6 |
| 2025 | 62 | 6.7 | 4.6 | 3.2 | 2.2 | 1.3 |
| 2026 | 60.2 | 7 | 5.8 | 3.4 | 1.9 | 1.1 |
| Oct 2026 | 58.3 | 7.9 | 6.2 | 3.6 | 1.6 | 0.9 |
If you’re weighing WordPress against a hosted builder for your own site, I compared the tradeoffs in Wix vs WordPress vs Squarespace.
How Many Websites Use WordPress?
Nobody publishes a direct count. The popular “500 million WordPress sites” figure has no primary source. It usually comes from multiplying a market share by an estimate of all websites, and both inputs are guesses.
These are the numbers you can check:
- W3Techs: 39.6% of all websites and 58.3% of websites that use a CMS.
- HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025: 64.3% of mobile sites that use a CMS.
- WordPress.org: 38,345,457 downloads of WordPress 7.1 between its release on August 19, 2026 and October 26, 2026.
Downloads aren’t sites, because updates count too and most sites update automatically. Still, 38 million downloads of a single release in about 10 weeks tells you how large the active base is.
These numbers mostly describe self-hosted WordPress. W3Techs has said it counts a WordPress.com site only when it runs on its own domain. If you’re still deciding between the two, I compared them in WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
WordPress Version Statistics
WordPress sites update quickly. According to WordPress.org stats, 71.3% of the sites that report to WordPress.org run version 7.x and 64.0% run the current 7.1 release.
W3Techs sees a slightly older picture, with 67.2% on version 7. That gap is expected. WordPress.org counts sites that check in for updates, while W3Techs reads version numbers from public pages.
- WordPress.org telemetry
- W3Techs public web
| Major version | WordPress.org telemetry | W3Techs public web |
|---|---|---|
| 7.x | 71.3 | 67.2 |
| 6.x | 21.3 | 26 |
| 5.x | 4.9 | 4.7 |
| 4.x | 2.2 | 2 |
| 3.x | 0.3 | 0.2 |
About 7.4% of WordPress sites still run version 5.x or older. They miss years of editor, performance and security work, and many of them are probably sites nobody maintains anymore.
PHP Version Statistics
PHP is where WordPress sites fall furthest behind. 33.8% of WordPress sites run PHP 8.1 or older, and none of those versions get security fixes anymore.
| PHP version | Share of WordPress sites | Security support ends |
|---|---|---|
| 8.5 | 5.5 | Dec 31, 2029 |
| 8.4 | 10.1 | Dec 31, 2028 |
| 8.3 | 27.3 | Dec 31, 2027 |
| 8.2 | 23.2 | Dec 31, 2026 |
| 8.1 | 9.7 | Ended |
| 8.0 | 3.5 | Ended |
| 7.4 | 15.2 | Ended |
| 7.3 | 1.3 | Ended |
| 7.2 | 1.3 | Ended |
| 7.1 and older | 2.9 | Ended |
This gets worse soon. PHP 8.2 stops getting security fixes on December 31, 2026. Unless hosts move sites forward, the share of WordPress sites on a supported PHP version drops from 66.2% to 42.9% overnight.
PHP 7.4 alone still runs 15.2% of WordPress sites. It is also the minimum version WordPress 7.0 accepts, so these sites can keep updating WordPress on a PHP release that lost support at the end of 2022.
If you manage WordPress sites, check the PHP version under Tools > Site Health. It is wise to move anything below 8.2 to PHP 8.3 or 8.4 before the end of the year, after testing the theme and plugins on a staging copy.
The database side looks similar:
- MariaDB 10.11 runs 19.6% of WordPress sites and MariaDB 11.8 runs 16.3%.
- MySQL 8.0 runs 13.3%.
- MySQL 5.7, which Oracle stopped supporting in October 2023, still runs 12.0%.
WordPress Plugin Statistics
The WordPress.org plugin directory lists about 72,600 free plugins, and the theme directory lists 8,775 themes. Some trackers report 76,000 or more, because they filter the directory differently.
Plugin submissions are climbing fast. The Plugins Team reviewed 12,713 plugins in 2025, 40.6% more than in 2024, and approved 5,415 of them.
The most-installed plugins haven’t changed much. WordPress.org rounds active installs into bands, so this chart shows each plugin’s band in millions:
| Plugin | Active installs (millions) |
|---|---|
| Elementor | 10 |
| Yoast SEO | 10 |
| Contact Form 7 | 10 |
| Classic Editor | 8 |
| LiteSpeed Cache | 7 |
| WooCommerce | 7 |
| Site Kit by Google | 5 |
| Akismet | 5 |
| WPForms Lite | 5 |
| All-in-One WP Migration | 5 |
| Wordfence | 5 |
Classic Editor still runs on 8 million+ sites, almost 8 years after the block editor shipped in WordPress 5.0. That one number says more about Gutenberg adoption than any survey I have seen.
Page Builder Statistics
W3Techs also tracks what runs on top of WordPress. Elementor, the most popular visual page builder, is on 31.5% of WordPress sites, almost double its share in 2022.
- Elementor
- WooCommerce
- WPBakery
- Bricks
| Year | Elementor | WooCommerce | WPBakery | Bricks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | — | 13.9 | — | — |
| 2020 | — | 16.2 | — | — |
| 2021 | — | 18.6 | — | — |
| 2022 | 16 | 20.4 | 15.3 | — |
| 2023 | 18.3 | 20 | 13.7 | — |
| 2024 | 22.1 | 20.9 | 11.8 | — |
| 2025 | 26.8 | 21 | 9.9 | 0.1 |
| 2026 | 30.5 | 20.4 | 8.3 | 0.3 |
| Oct 2026 | 31.5 | 19.7 | 7.3 | 0.4 |
- Elementor grew from 16.0% of WordPress sites in 2022 to 31.5% in October 2026.
- WPBakery fell from 15.3% to 7.3% over the same period.
- WooCommerce peaked at 21.0% on January 1, 2025 and is at 19.7% now.
- Bricks is still small at 0.4%, but that is 4 times its share in January 2025.
Elementor’s growth tells me most site owners still want a visual builder on top of WordPress. The block editor has improved a lot, but it hasn’t replaced that habit yet. If you’re choosing one, I compared the options in my WordPress page builder roundup.
WordPress Security Statistics
WordPress security problems are mostly plugin problems. Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, and only 6 of them were in WordPress core.
| Year | New vulnerabilities |
|---|---|
| 2020 (approx.) | 600 |
| 2021 | 1,382 |
| 2022 | 4,528 |
| 2023 | 5,948 |
| 2024 | 7,966 |
| 2025 | 11,334 |
The count has grown every year Patchstack has published it, from about 600 in 2020 to 11,334 in 2025. Part of that growth likely comes from more researchers and bug bounties finding more bugs, so the trend says as much about reporting as about code quality.
| Component | Vulnerabilities in 2025 |
|---|---|
| Plugins | 10,359 |
| Themes | 971 |
| WordPress core | 6 |
- 10,359 vulnerabilities were in plugins, 971 in themes and 6 in core.
- 1,966 (17%) were high severity, up 113% from 923 in 2024.
- 46% had no patch available when they were made public, up from 33% in 2024.
- 29% of the reports were in premium or freemium plugins and themes.
Speed matters more than the count. For the vulnerabilities attackers used most, Patchstack measured a weighted median of 5 hours from public disclosure to the first exploit.
| Time after disclosure | Share of heavily exploited vulnerabilities first exploited |
|---|---|
| 6 hours | 20 |
| 12 hours | 37 |
| 24 hours | 45 |
| 72 hours | 58 |
| 7 days | 70 |
So a weekly update routine is too slow for a site with many plugins. 45% of these vulnerabilities were exploited within 24 hours of disclosure.
The Sucuri hacked website report for 2023, its latest, found WordPress behind 95.5% of the CMS infections it detected. Much of that reflects WordPress’s size, but it also shows where attackers spend their time.
Fewer plugins, automatic updates for the ones you keep and a firewall with virtual patching cover most of this risk. I compared the tools in the best WordPress security plugins.
WordPress Performance Statistics
WordPress sites are slower than sites on hosted builders. In September 2026, 48.3% of WordPress sites passed all 3 Core Web Vitals on mobile, according to the HTTP Archive technology report. Shopify sites passed at 76.2% and Wix sites at 80.9%.
Core Web Vitals are Google’s 3 page experience measures. They check how fast the main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds to input (INP) and how much the layout jumps around (CLS).
- Good CWV on mobile
- Good CWV on desktop
| CMS | Good CWV on mobile | Good CWV on desktop | Origins tested |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wix | 80.9 | 87.1 | 177,709 |
| Shopify | 76.2 | 79.5 | 445,297 |
| Squarespace | 71 | 76.1 | 89,052 |
| Drupal | 64.7 | 66.1 | 93,193 |
| Joomla | 57.4 | 59.7 | 83,029 |
| WordPress | 48.3 | 53.7 | 2,658,175 |
WordPress has improved a lot. Its mobile pass rate was 13.9% in January 2020 and has more than tripled since. The other platforms improved faster, so WordPress still ranks last of these 6.
- WordPress
- Shopify
- Wix
| Month | WordPress | Shopify | Wix | Squarespace | Joomla | Drupal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2020 | 13.9 | 17 | 3 | 9.1 | 18.2 | 27.4 |
| Jan 2021 | 14.5 | 23.8 | 12 | 7.7 | 19 | 26.5 |
| Jan 2022 | 25.4 | 47.3 | 28.2 | 29.5 | 31.9 | 43.4 |
| Jan 2023 | 30.4 | 49 | 49.3 | 34.7 | 40.1 | 51 |
| Jan 2024 | 39 | 67.1 | 58.7 | 54 | 46.3 | 56.5 |
| Jan 2025 | 42.6 | 75.4 | 61.9 | 61 | 49 | 58.6 |
| Jan 2026 | 47.9 | 78.2 | 76.2 | 69.5 | 58.2 | 64.3 |
| Sep 2026 | 48.3 | 76.2 | 80.9 | 71 | 57.4 | 64.7 |
The gap comes down to one number. Only 22.9% of WordPress sites have a good Time to First Byte on mobile, against 83.8% of Shopify sites. TTFB is how long the server takes to start sending the page, so this is mostly a hosting and caching problem.
- WordPress
- Shopify
| Metric | WordPress | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| LCP | 55.4 | 87.7 |
| INP | 90.3 | 86.7 |
| CLS | 87.3 | 92.4 |
| TTFB | 22.9 | 83.8 |
| FCP | 42.8 | 86.8 |
WordPress beats Shopify on INP, 90.3% to 86.7%. Once a WordPress page arrives, it responds well. Getting the page there quickly is the weak spot.
If your site fails Core Web Vitals, I’d look at hosting and page caching before touching the theme. My guide to passing Core Web Vitals walks through the fixes, and my WordPress hosting recommendations cover the server side.
WooCommerce Statistics
WooCommerce is the free ecommerce plugin that turns a WordPress site into a store. W3Techs finds it on 7.8% of all websites and 47.4% of sites that use an ecommerce system.
- WooCommerce has 7 million+ active installs on WordPress.org.
- 19.7% of WordPress sites run it.
- Store Leads counts 4,321,090 live WooCommerce stores for the quarter so far.
Store counts are falling, though. Store Leads recorded a peak of 4,776,386 live stores in the second quarter of 2024. Its count for the third quarter of 2026 was 4,050,284, down about 10% from a year earlier.
| Quarter | Live WooCommerce stores |
|---|---|
| 2020 Q1 | 1,435,039 |
| 2020 Q4 | 1,770,544 |
| 2021 Q1 | 2,053,586 |
| 2021 Q4 | 3,207,564 |
| 2022 Q1 | 3,542,209 |
| 2022 Q4 | 3,902,868 |
| 2023 Q1 | 3,966,269 |
| 2023 Q4 | 4,573,529 |
| 2024 Q1 | 4,688,077 |
| 2024 Q2 | 4,776,386 |
| 2024 Q4 | 4,748,170 |
| 2025 Q1 | 4,601,177 |
| 2025 Q4 | 4,467,654 |
| 2026 Q1 | 4,076,168 |
| 2026 Q3 | 4,050,284 |
A store depends on its host even more than a blog does, because checkout pages can’t be cached. I covered that in the best WooCommerce hosting.
WordPress Release Statistics
WordPress ships 2 or 3 major releases a year. WordPress 7.0 came out on May 20, 2026 and WordPress 7.1 on August 19, 2026. WordPress 7.2 is in beta and scheduled for December 8, 2026.
Each release credits hundreds of contributors, volunteers and sponsored developers alike. WordPress 5.0 credited 423 people. Recent releases credit between 800 and 900+.
| Release | Released | Contributors |
|---|---|---|
| 5.0 Bebo | Dec 2018 | 423 |
| 5.1 Betty | Feb 2019 | 561 |
| 5.2 Jaco | May 2019 | 327 |
| 5.3 Kirk | Nov 2019 | 645 |
| 5.4 Adderley | Mar 2020 | 552 |
| 5.5 Eckstine | Aug 2020 | 805 |
| 5.6 Simone | Dec 2020 | 605 |
| 5.7 Esperanza | Mar 2021 | 481 |
| 5.8 Tatum | Jul 2021 | 530 |
| 5.9 Josephine | Jan 2022 | 624 |
| 6.0 Arturo | May 2022 | 500 |
| 6.1 Misha | Nov 2022 | 800 |
| 6.2 Dolphy | Mar 2023 | 600 |
| 6.3 Lionel | Aug 2023 | 650 |
| 6.4 Shirley | Nov 2023 | 600 |
| 6.5 Regina | Apr 2024 | 700 |
| 6.6 Dorsey | Jul 2024 | 630 |
| 6.7 Rollins | Nov 2024 | 780 |
| 6.8 Cecil | Apr 2025 | 900 |
| 6.9 Gene | Dec 2025 | 900 |
| 7.0 Armstrong | May 2026 | 875 |
| 7.1 Mary Lou | Aug 2026 | 800 |
The WordPress.org release archive lists 1,005 final releases, including security releases. 156 of those came out in 2026 alone, because security fixes are backported to many older branches.
Outdated WordPress Statistics
Some WordPress numbers keep circulating long after they stopped being true. These are the ones I’d stop using:
- “WordPress powers 43% of the web.” That held from 2022 to early 2026. It is 39.6% now.
- “500 million WordPress sites.” No primary source counts WordPress sites directly.
- “60,000 free plugins.” The directory passed 72,000 in 2026.
- “A $596.7 billion WordPress economy.” That is WP Engine’s estimate for 2020, published in 2021.
- “96.2% of hacked CMS sites run WordPress.” That is Sucuri’s 2022 figure. Its 2023 report says 95.5%.
- “44% of WordPress sites pass Core Web Vitals.” That was early 2025. It is 48.3% now.
FAQs on WordPress Statistics
Why do WordPress statistics from different sources disagree?
They measure different things. W3Techs surveys a ranked sample of popular websites, HTTP Archive crawls millions of pages from the Chrome UX Report and WordPress.org counts sites that check in for updates. Each number is right for its own sample, so compare figures from the same source.
What percentage of the top 1,000 websites use WordPress?
W3Techs puts WordPress at 50.7% of the top 1,000 websites that use a CMS, as of October 2026. Its share across all CMS-using sites is 58.3%.
Does W3Techs count WordPress.com sites?
W3Techs has said it counts a WordPress.com site only when it runs on its own domain. Most sites on a wordpress.com subdomain are not in its numbers.
How often do these WordPress statistics change?
W3Techs updates daily, HTTP Archive monthly and WordPress.org version stats continuously. Patchstack publishes its security report once a year, usually in the first quarter.
Is WordPress still worth using?
Yes, for most sites that need content, SEO or a store you control. It still runs 58.3% of CMS-using sites, and its directory alone lists about 72,600 free plugins.
Final Remarks
I get why a falling share makes people ask whether they should still build on WordPress. I would, for any site that needs content, search traffic or a store you fully own. The drop is concentrated in simple sites, and WordPress still holds 58.3% of every site that uses a CMS.
My advice is to use 39.6% and 58.3% when you cite WordPress market share in 2026. I’d also check the PHP version on every site you run before December 31, 2026, because that one check protects more sites than any statistic on this page.
Tell Google you want more of this.
Add Gaurav Tiwari as a preferred sourceOne tap, and this site shows up more often in your own Top Stories, AI Overviews and AI Mode. Remove it any time.
Disclaimer: This site is reader-supported. If you buy through some links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I trust and would use myself. Your support helps keep gauravtiwari.org free and focused on real-world advice. Thanks. - Gaurav Tiwari