Why PHP Still Dominates Server‑Side Development in 2023: Key Stats and Trends

PHP Market Share in 2023

According to the June 2023 survey, PHP remains the most popular server‑side scripting language with a 77.5% usage share, far ahead of ASP.NET (7.0%), Ruby (5.3%), Java (4.7%), Scala (2.9%), JavaScript (2.1%), static pages (1.9%), Python (1.5%), and others.

Search Keyword Trends for PHP

PHP +49

Object‑Oriented PHP +199

PHP developers +153

PHP web developers +406

Laravel framework –129

LAMP stack –57

Senior PHP developers +615

Full‑stack PHP developers +666

PHP Laravel developers +295

PHP software engineers +330

PHP Symfony developers +400

LEMP stack +217

LAPP stack +264

PHP MySQL developers +382

Mid‑level PHP developers +381

Chief PHP developers +355

PHP WordPress developers +363

PHP MySQL web developers +387

CakePHP +333

ThinkPHP +155

Major Websites Built with PHP

Facebook

Wikipedia

Tumblr

Slack

MailChimp

Etsy

WordPress

Typical PHP Application Types

The top three categories are services/APIs (66.6%), internal business applications (60.5%), and content management systems (43.6%).

Where Teams Deploy PHP Applications

Deployment preferences are AWS (46%), on‑premises (36.8%), and Google Cloud Platform (19.5%). Among “other” responses, VPS services are most common.

Web Server Usage in PHP Teams

Apache leads with 57.3%, followed closely by Nginx at 56.5%, and Lighttpd at 9.3%.

Team Priorities

Teams aim to deliver error‑free software and focus on business‑critical features, but inevitably split effort between maintenance (bug fixes, performance, security, dependency updates, refactoring) and new development.

Containerization Adoption

57.5% of respondents are already using containers, 19.8% plan to adopt them in 2024, and 22.7% have no plans to use containers.

Orchestration Technology Adoption

47.7% of teams use orchestration tools, 17.2% plan to adopt within the next year, while 35.1% have no plans. Kubernetes and Terraform are the preferred open‑source solutions, often combined with Ansible and Puppet.

PHP Version Distribution

PHP 7.4 remains the most used version (54.2% of respondents) despite reaching end‑of‑life. PHP 8.1 (46.1%) and PHP 8.0 (35.4%) are the next most popular. Overall, 61.9% of teams still run versions that have reached end‑of‑life.

Challenges of Upgrading PHP

While PHP strives for backward compatibility, each new version introduces subtle changes that can cause significant application impact. Deprecated versions, when finally removed, may lead to unexpected crashes, requiring extensive refactoring and testing to ensure functionality.

Primary Pain Points for PHP Teams

Performance issues – 32.2%

Debugging – 29.8%

System integration – 27.5%

Hiring – 24.4%

Dependency management – 24.1%

Conclusion

With PHP 7.4 reaching end‑of‑life in November 2022 and PHP 7 ending its lifecycle this year, teams still on older versions must migrate quickly to supported releases or consider commercial long‑term support options. Investing in containerization, orchestration, quality monitoring, infrastructure‑as‑code, and robust CI/CD pipelines will help teams adapt to future PHP updates more smoothly.