Why PHP Still Dominates Server‑Side Development: Insights from W3Techs Data

According to a newly released W3Techs report, PHP remains the dominant server‑side programming language on the web, accounting for about 80% of usage across the top sites.

The study examined technologies used by the Alexa‑ranked top 10 million websites, focusing on the most popular sites to produce a year‑by‑year comparison from January 2010 to September 2021.

The chart (showing only languages with over 1% share) reveals that PHP’s usage rose from a low of 72.5% in 2010 to a peak of 80.6% in 2015, with a slight decline after 2019.

ASP.NET was the only other language to exceed a 10% share, peaking at 24.4% in 2010 before falling to 8.3% in early 2023. Ruby showed steady growth, increasing from 0.5% to 5.3% over the same period, while Java’s share stayed roughly constant around 4%.

Some developers question the data, noting that a large proportion of the counted sites are built with WordPress (about 42.6% of all sites) and that many WordPress users are not programmers, which they argue may skew the results.

Nevertheless, other developers point out that PHP remains a stable and mature choice; even after removing WordPress‑driven traffic, PHP’s share would still far exceed that of most other languages.

In conclusion, while newer technologies such as Node.js, Go, and Python continue to challenge PHP’s position, the language’s entrenched presence in the web ecosystem persists.