WordPress powers 42.5% of all websites globally as of April 2026, making it the most widely used content management system in the world ahead of every competitor by a significant margin.
These wordpress statistics confirm what the data has shown for over a decade: no other platform comes close.
Quick Facts: WordPress Statistics at a Glance
Before diving into the detail, here is a snapshot of the most important numbers:
- WordPress powers 42.5% of all websites globally
- Among CMS-only sites, WordPress holds a 59.9% market share
- Estimated 37.5 million active WordPress sites (BuiltWith); up to 605 million total hostnames
- Over 61,000 free plugins in the WordPress.org directory
- Nearly 14,000 free themes on WordPress.org
- WooCommerce powers 33.43% of all online stores globally
- WordPress is available in 208 languages and locales
- 53 major releases since version 1.0 in 2003
- WordPress sites face a security attack on average every 32 minutes
- 88% of WordPress sites currently run version 6.x
What Percentage of All Websites Use WordPress?
As of April 2026, 42.5% of all websites globally run WordPress, according to W3Techs, which tracks technology usage across what it defines as the "relevant web" sites with real traffic and useful content, excluding parked domains and empty pages.
That single number is worth pausing on. Nearly half the web runs on one platform. Its nearest competitor, Shopify, sits at 5.1%. That is not a close race.
How Is This Percentage Actually Measured?
W3Techs surveys the top 10 million websites by traffic and records which technologies they use. This is important context because different measurement tools produce different figures.
BuiltWith, which focuses on actively visited properties, counts roughly 37.5 million live WordPress sites. NetCraft, which counts all registered hostnames including inactive ones, produces a theoretical figure closer to 605 million.
Neither is wrong. They are measuring different things.What's often overlooked is the distinction between share of all websites and CMS market share. These are two separate figures and both competitors in this space frequently conflate them.
Here is the difference clearly stated:
- Share of all websites = WordPress sites as a percentage of every website on the internet, including those with no CMS
- CMS market share = WordPress sites as a percentage of only those sites using a known CMS
Currently, 28.6% of websites still operate without any recognized CMS hand-coded or built on custom systems. Once you remove those from the calculation, WordPress's dominance becomes even clearer.
If you find yourself converting raw share figures to percentages manually, a percentage calculators hub can help cross-check those calculations quickly.
Shopify, its nearest rival in the CMS-only comparison, holds just 7.2% which works out to roughly 1/13 in percentage terms relative to WordPress's share. The gap is not marginal. Among the top 10,000 websites by traffic, WordPress accounts for roughly 58% of CMS usage.
Platforms like Wix and Shopify are nearly absent at this traffic tier. Drupal, despite holding just 1% overall, represents 6–7% among the largest institutional sites a signal of where it has retained its niche.
The HTTP Archive's 2025 Web Almanac, using a completely different methodology, found that WordPress powers 64.3% of CMS-driven mobile sites. Different data source, same conclusion.
How Many Websites Use WordPress?
The honest answer is: it depends on how you define a website.
- 605 million — derived from applying WordPress's 42.5% share to NetCraft's February 2026 count of 1.42 billion total hostnames. This includes parked domains, staging environments, and sites with no active content.
- 37.5 million — BuiltWith's count of live, actively visited WordPress properties.
The real number of functioning WordPress websites sits somewhere between these two figures. Most practitioners working in web development treat the BuiltWith figure as the more useful baseline for active sites, while the NetCraft-derived number reflects the theoretical ceiling.
Regardless of which figure you use, the conclusion does not change: WordPress runs more websites than any other platform, and by a wide margin.
WordPress Market Share Growth: Year-by-Year Data (2011–2026)
WordPress has more than tripled its market share over the past 15 years. What began as a blogging tool in 2003 now underpins nearly half the web.
|
Year |
WordPress Share of All Websites |
|
2011 |
13.1% |
|
2012 |
15.8% |
|
2013 |
17.4% |
|
2014 |
21.0% |
|
2015 |
23.3% |
|
2016 |
25.6% |
|
2017 |
27.3% |
|
2018 |
29.2% |
|
2019 |
32.7% |
|
2020 |
35.4% |
|
2021 |
39.5% |
|
2022 |
43.2% |
|
2023 |
43.1% |
|
2024 |
43.5% |
|
2025 |
43.4% |
|
2026 |
42.5% |
Key Milestones Worth Noting
2021 was arguably the most significant year in WordPress history from a market share perspective. That was the first time WordPress became more common than "no CMS" meaning more websites ran WordPress than were hand-coded or built without any content management system at all.
That had never happened before with any single platform.2022 marked peak market share at 43.2%. Since then, growth has leveled off, hovering between 42.5% and 43.5%.
2026 shows the first meaningful dip — down to 42.5%. That is a fraction of a percentage point, but it is the first clear downward movement after years of either growth or flat stability.
Is WordPress Actually Losing Ground?
Not in any dramatic sense. The HTTP Archive's 2025 Web Almanac describes the current phase as WordPress "shifting from expansion to stabilization" which is the language of market saturation, not competitive displacement.
Shopify grew from 0.1% in 2014 to 5.1% today. Wix moved from near zero to 4.2%. These are real gains. But at the same time, Joomla and Drupal the two CMS platforms most comparable to WordPress have roughly halved their market share during the same period. WordPress did not lose share to them. It absorbed it.
In practice, most web professionals still default to WordPress for new projects across a wide range of use cases. The plateau reflects a maturing market, not a platform in decline.
WordPress Usage by Country
The United States has the highest number of WordPress sites by a large margin, but WordPress adoption is genuinely global.
WordPress Usage by Country
|
Country |
Estimated WordPress Sites |
|
United States |
~16–17 million |
|
Germany |
~2.0 million |
|
United Kingdom |
~1.5–1.7 million |
|
Brazil |
~1.1–1.2 million |
|
France |
~1.0 million |
|
Italy |
~0.9 million |
|
Netherlands |
~0.8 million |
|
India |
~0.7 million |
|
Spain |
~0.6–0.7 million |
|
Russia |
~0.6 million |
Japan An Interesting Outlier
Japan stands out significantly. According to the State of the Word 2024, WordPress powers 58.5% of all Japanese websites and holds an 83% CMS market share in the country far above the global average of 59.9%.
This is a data point that gets cited but rarely explained. The absence of strong locally-built CMS alternatives and the early adoption of WordPress by Japanese developer communities are widely cited as contributing factors.
Emerging Market Growth
Google Trends data shows the highest relative search interest in WordPress coming from Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Kenya. Non-English WordPress installations now outnumber English ones.
With translations covering 208 languages and locales, the platform's continued growth in emerging markets is structurally supported.
Who Uses WordPress? Site Type Breakdown
WordPress is not just a blogging platform that perception is outdated.
According to Wikipedia entry on WordPress, the software was originally created as a blogging tool but has since evolved to support traditional websites, media galleries, membership sites, learning management systems, and online stores.
The reality of who actually uses it today is considerably broader.
In practice, WordPress serves several distinct categories of websites:
- Personal blogs and content sites — the original use case, still widely active
- Small to medium business websites — by volume, this is likely the largest category
- eCommerce stores — primarily through WooCommerce, which powers over 33% of all online stores
- News and media publications — major outlets including large newspapers use WordPress at scale
- Enterprise and institutional sites — universities, government agencies, and large corporations increasingly run WordPress
- Web applications — through its REST API, WordPress is used as an application framework in some technical environments
What's often overlooked is that WordPress's market share figure includes all of these categories simultaneously. It is not one type of site it is the infrastructure behind an enormous range of them.
WordPress Version & Technical Statistics
WordPress has had 53 major releases and over 760 total releases since version 1.0 launched in 2003. Each major release is named after a jazz musician a tradition that has continued since the beginning.
Which Version Are Most WordPress Sites Running?
|
WordPress Version |
Share of Sites |
|
Version 6.x |
~88% |
|
Version 5.x |
~8.6% |
|
Version 4.x or older |
~3.2% |
|
Version 3.x |
~0.3% |
The adoption rate for version 6.x is relatively strong. However, approximately 12% of sites still run version 5.x or older some of which are no longer receiving active security patches. From a practical standpoint, those sites carry elevated vulnerability risk.
This is not a theoretical concern; outdated WordPress versions are among the most commonly exploited attack surfaces in web security.
WordPress Themes Statistics
How Many WordPress Themes Are There?
As of April 2026, the WordPress.org theme directory contains nearly 14,000 free themes. ThemeForest, the largest third-party marketplace, adds another 12,000+ paid options.
Independent theme shops and niche marketplaces push the realistic total well above 30,000 themes across the ecosystem.
Most Popular WordPress Themes
Among the top 1 million websites tracked by BuiltWith, theme usage breaks down as follows:
|
Theme |
Sites in Top 1M |
Market Share |
|
Hello Elementor |
22,658 |
12.9% |
|
Astra |
14,480 |
7.73% |
|
GeneratePress |
11,675 |
6.23% |
|
Divi |
11,366 |
6.07% |
|
Flatsome |
5,643 |
3.01% |
On Envato Market (ThemeForest), the best-selling themes of all time are Avada (1.054M sales), The7 (333K), BeTheme (332K), Enfold (269K), and Flatsome (265K).
Block Themes — A Genuine Shift
In October 2024, the WordPress.org theme repository surpassed 1,000 block-based themes a milestone that reflects the ecosystem's gradual move toward the native block editor.
This is not just a cosmetic trend; block themes represent a structural change in how WordPress sites are built and customized.
How Much Do WordPress Themes Cost?
|
Theme Type |
Typical Cost |
|
Free themes |
$0 |
|
Premium themes |
$10–$200+ (avg. ~$59) |
|
Annual membership |
$48–$399/year (avg. ~$145) |
|
Lifetime membership |
~$255 one-time |
WordPress Plugin Statistics
How Many WordPress Plugins Are There?
The WordPress.org Plugin Directory currently lists over 61,000 free plugins. CodeCanyon adds more than 5,200 paid options.
Beyond these two sources, thousands of additional plugins are sold through independent developers, SaaS companies, and niche marketplaces pushing the realistic total likely above 70,000.
Most Popular WordPress Plugins
Several plugins have crossed the 5 million active installation mark, which gives a clear picture of what WordPress users actually rely on day to day:
|
Plugin |
Active Installations |
|
Elementor |
10M+ |
|
Yoast SEO |
10M+ |
|
Contact Form 7 |
10M+ |
|
Classic Editor |
9M+ |
|
WooCommerce |
7M+ |
|
LiteSpeed Cache |
7M+ |
|
Akismet |
6M+ |
|
WPForms |
6M+ |
|
All-in-One WP Migration |
5M+ |
|
Site Kit by Google |
5M+ |
|
Wordfence Security |
5M+ |
The spread across categories page building, SEO, forms, caching, security, eCommerce, and migration illustrates how broadly WordPress is being used and what users consistently need it to do.
Page Builder Plugin Usage
Approximately 59.9% of WordPress sites use a page builder. Among those, the breakdown is:
|
Page Builder |
Share of Builder Usage |
|
Elementor |
43% |
|
WordPress Block Editor |
18% |
|
WPBakery |
13% |
|
Divi |
10% |
|
Beaver Builder |
~2% |
The trend here is worth noting. Elementor remains dominant, but its share has dropped from 56% in 2024 to 43% in 2026. The native Block Editor has grown. WPBakery and Divi are both declining.
The ecosystem is gradually pulling toward WordPress's built-in tools which has cost implications for users who have invested heavily in third-party builders.
WordPress & WooCommerce Statistics
WooCommerce is the eCommerce layer of WordPress, and its market position is substantial.
WooCommerce Market Share
|
Platform |
eCommerce Market Share |
|
WooCommerce |
33.43% |
|
Shopify |
21.33% |
|
Custom Cart |
12.46% |
|
Wix eCommerce |
7.53% |
WooCommerce powers 33.43% of all online stores globally and runs on 8.6% of all websites. Applying that 8.6% figure to NetCraft's count of 1.42 billion hostnames produces an estimated 122 million WooCommerce-enabled sites though many of these are likely inactive or low-traffic, and that caveat matters when interpreting the number.
Its nearest competitor, Shopify, holds 21.33%. The gap is real, though Shopify has grown consistently over the past several years, particularly among larger merchants.
As reported by TechCrunch in its coverage of Automattic open-source strategy, WooCommerce's structural advantage lies in its flexibility and open-source foundation as a self-hosted solution, it carries no mandatory transaction fees, which gives it a distinct edge for merchants managing margins tightly.
WordPress Security Statistics
Security is one area where the data is stark and frequently underreported in WordPress statistics roundups.
How Often Are WordPress Sites Attacked?
WordPress sites face a security attack on average every 32 minutes. That figure sounds alarming, but context matters. WordPress's popularity makes it an attractive target not because it is inherently insecure, but because attacking the most widely used platform offers the highest return for bad actors. The same logic applies to any dominant software.
Where Do Vulnerabilities Come From?
The majority of WordPress security issues are not found in WordPress core they originate in plugins and themes.
Outdated, abandoned, or poorly coded third-party extensions are the most common entry points. This is a consistent pattern reported across web security research and is widely understood among WordPress developers and site administrators.
Version Risk
As noted earlier, approximately 12% of WordPress sites still run version 5.x or older. Sites running versions that no longer receive security updates are at meaningfully higher risk.
In practice, teams managing multiple WordPress sites commonly report that version management and plugin audits are among their most time-consuming maintenance tasks not because WordPress is fragile, but because the sheer scale of the ecosystem creates ongoing housekeeping demands.
WordPress Community & Ecosystem Statistics
WordCamp Events
Since the first WordCamp in 2006, over 1,300 events have been hosted across more than 70 countries. These are locally organized conferences not corporate events which reflects the genuinely decentralized nature of the WordPress community.
Contributor Data
- 38% of contributors to WordPress 6.6 were first-timers
- 61% of enterprise organizations reported contributing to open-source WordPress projects in 2024, up from 38% in 2023
That jump in enterprise contribution from 38% to 61% in a single year is a notable shift. It suggests that larger organizations are increasingly treating WordPress not just as infrastructure they consume, but as a platform they have a stake in maintaining.
The Economic Scale of WordPress
The WordPress ecosystem supports a large global economy of developers, designers, agencies, plugin and theme businesses, and hosting providers.
Precise revenue figures across the full ecosystem are not publicly consolidated and vary significantly by source and methodology.
What is broadly understood in the industry is that WordPress-adjacent businesses from solo freelancers to large agencies represent a substantial portion of the global web development economy.
Accurate aggregate figures remain difficult to verify and should be treated with appropriate skepticism when cited without methodology.
WordPress Hosting Market
WordPress hosting is a significant commercial category in its own right. The platform's dominance has driven an entire tier of hosting products specifically built and optimized around it managed WordPress hosting being the most prominent.
Providers in this space range from shared hosting with WordPress pre-installed to fully managed platforms that handle updates, backups, security patching, and performance optimization automatically.
The pricing range reflects this: basic WordPress hosting starts below $5/month, while enterprise-grade managed WordPress infrastructure can run into thousands of dollars monthly.
Interestingly, the growth of WordPress as a platform has directly shaped the hosting industry's product roadmap.
Features like one-click staging environments, automatic core updates, and WordPress-specific caching layers are now standard expectations rather than premium differentiators a shift that has happened largely in the past five to seven years.
Also Read: Blog TurboGeekOrg
Conclusion
WordPress holds 42.5% of the global web, 59.9% of the CMS market, and powers the most widely used eCommerce platform. Growth has stabilized, not reversed.
The ecosystem themes, plugins, community, and hosting remains the largest of any CMS by a substantial margin.
Frequently Asked Questions About WordPress Statistics
Q: Is WordPress still growing in 2026?
Growth has plateaued since 2022 and dipped slightly to 42.5% in early 2026. This reflects market saturation rather than competitive decline. WordPress remains dominant by a large margin.
Q: What is the difference between WordPress's share of all websites and its CMS market share?
Share of all websites includes sites with no CMS. CMS market share counts only sites using a known platform. WordPress holds 42.5% of all sites and 59.9% of CMS-only sites. Understanding 32/40 as a percentage gives a useful reference point for how dominant ratios like these translate numerically.
Q: What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
WordPress.org is the open-source software you download and self-host. WordPress.com is a commercial hosting service built on that software. Market share statistics typically refer to the WordPress software, not the hosted service specifically.
Q: Is WordPress losing users to Shopify or Wix?
Shopify and Wix have grown meaningfully, but both remain far behind WordPress overall. Shopify holds 5.1% of all websites; WordPress holds 42.5%. There is no data suggesting mass migration away from WordPress.
Q: What percentage of eCommerce sites use WooCommerce?
WooCommerce powers 33.43% of all online stores globally, making it the most widely used eCommerce platform ahead of Shopify at 21.33%
