PHP usage statistics


Stats on website technologies


  • The next closest competitor is ASP.Net at 19.8%.
  • Java is seriously trailing in web at 3.5%.
  • Ruby is hardly represented at 0.5%.


I was a little shocked to see how high the numbers were when I saw them.  I mean, what about github, and Basecamp, and other sites using alternative technologies?  Well, after more thought I realized that while these popular sites do use non-PHP technologies, they are just single sites.  However when taken into account in the scope of the entire web, they only count as one.

Note on limited career moves

Now don’t take what I am saying totally wrong.  I am not so naive to think a web developers cannot survive without PHP in their toolbox.  I realize there are many developers using alternative technologies who have never touched PHP, and they are able to survive.  I am simply saying that if a web developer really wants to do well they will run into PHP more often than not, and it would be a shame if they were not able to play in that ballpark.

The 20.2% of websites not using PHP is still a very large number.  According to Netcraft there are around 672 million active websites at last estimation.  Which means there are around 139 million websites not running PHP.

PHP Versions


In that link we see:

  • PHP version 4 is used for 2.9%

For those still using PHP 4, it is time to make solid plans to get updated.  It has been almost 9 years since PHP version 5 was released.  That is a very long time, and those old PHP 4 sites and applications need to be updated. (Aim for the current version 5.4)



  • Newer 5.4 is very low at only 4.1%.

I was sad to see version 5.3 was not significantly higher than 5.2, but it kinda makes sense.  Because 5.3 was such a drastic change in the object model introducing namespaces, late static bindings, and closure, many developers feel intimidated to update their servers from 5.2 to 5.3 even though the upgrade would most likely not break anything in their code.

I would encourage anyone running their code on 5.2 to try out 5.3 or 5.4 on a “testing” server, then if all is well plan to migrate in production as well.  Then they can take advantage of more speed and include some of the new technologies that came with 5.3 and 5.4 in their code.

We can clearly see how much PHP rules the web space.  But what about elsewhere?

Overall programming language usage



In closing

So yes, there are many programming languages out there and I encourage all developers to learn as much as they can. But as professionals we cannot possibly learn them all and be good at all of them.  So I say pick one, and learn it very well while still dabbling with others.

