WordPress Statistics 2026: The Complete Data Guide

WordPress is the most widely used website platform on earth. Whether you run a personal blog, an online store, or a major news website, there is a good chance the site was built on WordPress. In 2026, the platform powers more of the internet than any other technology — and the ecosystem built around it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. This guide brings together the most complete, up-to-date WordPress statistics available, in plain English.

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The Big Picture: WordPress Market Share in 2026

The numbers that matter most for understanding WordPress's position on the internet start with market share — and they are extraordinary.

• WordPress powers approximately 42.5–43.5% of all websites globally as of April 2026, according to W3Techs — the industry's most widely cited source for CMS tracking

• That means if you visited ten websites today, roughly four of them run on WordPress

• WordPress holds approximately 59.9–60.8% of the CMS market share — meaning nearly six out of every ten websites built on a known content management system use WordPress

• The next closest competitor, Shopify, holds just 5.1% of all websites — making WordPress roughly nine times larger than its nearest rival

• Other CMS competitors include Wix (4.2%), Squarespace (2.4%), and Joomla (2.1%)

• WordPress has more than doubled its market share over the past decade, growing from 21% of all websites in 2014 to over 42% in 2026

• 49.7% of the top 1 million websites globally use WordPress, including globally recognised brands

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CMS Platform	Share of All Websites	CMS Market Share
WordPress	~42.5–43.5%	~59.9–61%
Shopify	~5.1%	~6.7%
Wix	~4.2%	~5.2%
Squarespace	~2.4%	~3.3%
Joomla	~2.1%	~2.6%
Drupal	~1.5%	~2.0%

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How Many Websites Use WordPress?

The raw number of WordPress websites depends on how you count — but every measurement confirms that WordPress is a dominant and global force.

• Estimates range from 472 million to 605 million WordPress websites globally, depending on the methodology used

• NetCraft's February 2026 web survey counted a total of 1.42 billion hostnames on the internet — with WordPress's market share implying around 600+ million WordPress-powered properties

• Approximately 36.8 million websites are live and actively running on WordPress at any given moment

• The United States leads in WordPress adoption with over 16.2 million WordPress websites — more than any other country

• WordPress is available in 208 languages, reflecting its truly global reach

• An average of approximately 20,000 new WordPress websites are created every single day (Hostinger)

• WordPress bloggers publish approximately six new posts every second

• Around 8.5 billion posts are made on WordPress every year

• Every month, 77 million new comments are posted on WordPress sites

Notable Companies That Use WordPress

Major organisations that use WordPress include: The White House, BBC, TechCrunch, CNN, The New York Times, Sony Music, TIME Magazine, TED, Spotify, UPS, NBC, and the NFL. When nearly half the top million websites globally use WordPress, it is clearly not just a tool for beginners.

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WordPress Growth Over Time

Understanding where WordPress came from helps put 2026 numbers in context.

• WordPress was launched in 2003 as a simple blogging tool by Matt Mullenweg

• By July 2011, WordPress was powering over 50 million blogs

• In 2013, it captured 59% CMS market share — already the most popular CMS globally

• In 2018, WordPress had a 29.2% share of all websites — showing how much it has grown since

• WordPress crossed the 40% threshold in 2021, also becoming more common than “no CMS” — the first time a single platform was used on more websites than all hand-coded sites combined

• WordPress peaked at approximately 43.6% in mid-2025, with a slight decline to around 42.5% in early 2026 — the first meaningful dip in over 20 years

• The slight decline reflects growing competition from SaaS website builders, particularly Wix (which grew 32.6% year-over-year) and Shopify

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WordPress Versions: How Up-to-Date Are Sites?

The version breakdown tells us something important about the security and health of the WordPress ecosystem.

• 91.4% of all WordPress websites run on Version 6 — the most current major version — as of February 2026

• 6.0% of websites still run on Version 5

• 2.3% remain on Version 4

• Only 0.2% are running on Version 3

The high adoption rate of Version 6 is a positive sign for security and performance. WordPress 6.8 “Cecil”, the latest major update released in 2025, introduced UI improvements, enhanced security features, and a smoother editing experience. The vast majority of the WordPress web has adopted it.

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Plugins: The Power Behind WordPress

Plugins are what make WordPress so flexible. They extend what the platform can do — from contact forms to eCommerce to advanced SEO — without requiring any coding.

• There are over 59,000 to 70,000 plugins available for WordPress in total, with more than 59,000 in the official WordPress.org directory alone

• WordPress plugins have been downloaded over 1 billion times collectively from WordPress.org

• The WordPress Plugin Team reviewed 12,713 new plugin submissions in 2025 — a 40.6% increase from the previous year

• The most popular plugins by category include security tools (Wordfence, Sucuri), performance optimisers (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache), form builders (WPForms, Gravity Forms), SEO tools (Yoast SEO, Rank Math), and page builders (Elementor, Divi)

• WP Rocket holds approximately 8.0% market share among performance optimisation plugins

• Career sites using chatbot plugins to engage visitors report 95% more leads — showing the business impact of the right plugin combination

Plugin Security Warning

Plugins are also WordPress's biggest security vulnerability. 91% of all WordPress security vulnerabilities originate from plugins, not from WordPress core itself. More on this in the security section below.

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Themes: Customising the Look

Themes control the visual design of a WordPress site. The market for themes is vast and competitive.

• There are over 30,000 WordPress themes available across the WordPress.org directory and third-party marketplaces

• Hello Elementor leads the theme market with over 23,000 websites using it

• Astra powers 15,000+ sites, followed by GeneratePress and Divi at 11,000–12,000 websites each

• Popular premium themes on ThemeForest include Avada, The7, BeTheme, Enfold, and Flatsome

• 75%+ of new themes are now built using Full Site Editing (FSE) — a block-based approach that gives designers full control over every aspect of a site

• Theme pricing is highly flexible: free themes are widely available, premium themes typically cost $40–$120, and developer memberships range from $48 to $399 per year

• A 1-second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by 7% — which is why performance-optimised themes have become so important

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WooCommerce: WordPress for eCommerce

WooCommerce is the eCommerce extension that turned WordPress into a full online store platform — and it is enormous.

• WooCommerce powers over 6.2 million active online stores

• It holds approximately 33–38% of the global eCommerce platform market share — making it the world's most widely used eCommerce platform

• WooCommerce is used by approximately 8.8% of all websites worldwide and around 12.3% of all websites using a detectable CMS

• Since its launch in 2011, WooCommerce has been installed over 382 million times — averaging roughly 50,000 downloads per day

• WooCommerce-based websites generate an average of between $25 million and $50 million in annual revenue (based on platform-wide estimates)

• 20.7% of WordPress sites use WooCommerce as their eCommerce solution

• By early 2025, WooCommerce exceeded 8 million active installations

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The WordPress Economy

WordPress is not just a platform — it is an entire economy that supports millions of people worldwide.

• A WP Engine study estimated the total WordPress economy at $596.7 billion — encompassing hosting, themes, plugins, development services, and businesses built on the platform

• Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and a major contributor to WordPress development, generates approximately $710 million annually

• WordPress hosting is one of the largest categories in the web hosting market; Hostinger alone hosts over 9.5 million websites, with 54% of them built on WordPress

• Building a basic WordPress site typically costs $500 to $3,000

• Custom-designed WordPress sites can cost up to $52,800 or more depending on complexity

• WordPress developers typically charge $20 to $100 per hour for standard work; headless WordPress specialists charge $100 to $150 per hour

• WordPress itself remains free and open-source — the cost comes from hosting, themes, plugins, and development

• A basic WordPress site can be hosted for as little as $60 per year, plus approximately $10 for a domain

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WordPress Security in 2026

Security is the most critical challenge facing the WordPress ecosystem in 2026. The numbers are sobering.

Vulnerability Statistics

• 11,334 new vulnerabilities were found in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025 — a 42% increase compared to 2024 (Patchstack)

• In 2024, 7,966 new vulnerabilities were discovered — a 34% increase over 2023

• As of 2025, security databases track a total of 64,782 vulnerabilities across the WordPress ecosystem — the most comprehensive vulnerability record of any CMS

• 91% of all WordPress vulnerabilities come from plugins, not from WordPress core

• Just 6 vulnerabilities were found in WordPress core itself in 2025 — demonstrating that the core platform is genuinely well-maintained and secure

• In just one week of January 2026, 333 new plugin vulnerabilities were disclosed — 253 in plugins and 80 in themes

How Quickly Are Sites Attacked?

• WordPress sites were attacked every 32 minutes on average in 2025

• Some sources report attacks happening every 28 minutes, driven by AI-powered automated scanning

• 41.5% of WordPress vulnerabilities are now classified as exploitable under real-world conditions

• When a new exploitable vulnerability is published, first exploitation can begin within 24 hours — meaning site owners have very little time to patch

• Attackers do not just exploit new vulnerabilities — they also scan for older unpatched flaws, hoping to catch sites that have not been updated

The Plugin Patching Problem

• More than half of plugin developers to whom Patchstack reported vulnerabilities in 2024 did not patch the issue before it was publicly disclosed (Patchstack 2026 Security Report)

• This is a systemic problem: many free plugins generate no revenue for their developers, making it hard to justify the cost of timely security patching

• Only 30% of WordPress site owners have enabled auto-updates for plugins

• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) accounts for 53.3% of all new WordPress vulnerabilities — the most common attack type

• Broken Access Control vulnerabilities make up 12.9% of issues

• Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) accounts for 17% of flaws

The Cost of Getting Hacked

• 60% of small businesses that suffer a serious cyberattack go out of business within six months

• UK businesses face an average of £25,700 in clean-up costs following a WordPress security breach

• Security plugin Wordfence blocks 330 million malicious hits every single day, including over 6.4 billion brute-force attacks per month

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WordPress Performance Statistics

• The average loading time for a WordPress website is 2.5 seconds on desktop and 13.25 seconds on mobile — the mobile figure highlighting why performance optimisation matters

• 88–91% of WordPress websites run on the current Version 6

• Full Site Editing (FSE) has been adopted by more than 75% of new themes, representing a fundamental shift in how WordPress sites are built

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WordPress Statistics at a Glance

Statistic	Number
Share of all websites	~42.5–43.5%
CMS market share	~59.9–61%
Total WordPress websites	472–605 million
New websites created daily	~20,000
Total plugins available	59,000–70,000+
Total plugin downloads	1 billion+
WooCommerce active stores	6.2 million+
WooCommerce eCommerce market share	~33–38%
WordPress economy total value	$596.7 billion
Security vulnerabilities in 2025	11,334
% of vulnerabilities from plugins	~91%
Core vulnerabilities in 2025	6

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Frequently Asked Questions