The latest statistics from W3Techs make it clear that WordPress is losing market share while other platforms are stable or experiencing strong interest. Yet, there is reason to believe that WordPress may turn around.
Quarterly Declines Since January 2025
W3Techs’ quarterly statistics show WordPress usage holding steady at about 43.0% in 2022, followed by a slight increase to about 43.2% in 2023. That modest level of growth continued in 2024, after which WordPress’s market share started to decline modestly in 2025, picking up speed at the end of the year.
W3Techs’ statistics then show six quarters of consecutive decline in market share beginning in 2025 and continuing through the present date.
WordPress Quarterly Declines
- 2025 Jan 43.6%
- 2025 Apr 43.5%
- 2025 Jul 43.4%
- 2025 Oct 43.3%
- 2026 Jan 43.0%
The above quarterly declines, when looked at year over year from January 2025 to January 2026 show a modest decline of .60 percentage points:
- January 2025: 43.60%
- January 2026: 43.00%
However, when you look at the monthly statistics starting with December 2025 (market share of 43.20%) and continue to May 2026 (market share 41.90% ), the W3Techs data shows a decline of 1.1 percentage points. That’s almost four times the January 2025-26 year over year decline of 0.60 percentage points.
Six Month Decline In WordPress Market Share
WordPress was already losing market share at a modest pace in 2025. But the pace of decline took a steeper drop beginning on December 2025.
Here is the six month steady decline in market share beginning in December 2025
- Dec 2025: 43.20%
- Jan 2026: 43.00%
- Feb 2026: 42.80%
- Mar 2026: 42.70%
- Apr 2026: 42.50%
- May 27, 2026: 41.90%
That’s six consecutive months of decline. The tragedy of this negative turn in WordPress’s market share is that WordPress just released a major version of its software that sets in place all the pieces necessary for plugin and theme developers to integrate AI features into WordPress, placing it on the verge of major innovations that could outpace the rest of the CMS industry because of the relative size of the WordPress community.
Why Is WordPress Losing Market Share?
W3Techs statistics show that WordPress’s market share decline began in the quarter after Mullenweg initiated his public attacks against WP Engine.
Mullenweg’s actions included:
- Creating an anti-WP Engine website encouraging their users to abandon WPE and sign up with other web hosts
- Temporarily preventing tens of thousands of WPE hosted WordPress users from updating their websites
- Requiring all contributors signing in to their WordPress.org accounts to tick a box confirming that they were “not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.”
- Cloning premium plugins owned by WP Engine and releasing them for free.
- Preventing WP Engine employees from accessing their WordPress.org accounts.
Sentiment was not in Mullenweg’s favor, 8% of employees of Mullenweg’s for-profit Automattic resigned. Among those who resigned were Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the executive director of the WordPress project itself.
WP Engine responded to Mullenweg’s attacks with a Federal lawsuit in October 2024, leading to a preliminary injunction against both Mullenweg and Automattic in December 2024.
Matt Mullenweg has plenty of fans on his side but there is clearly a negative sentiment that persists to to this day. A recent tweet on X brought out many supporters but an equal amount of detractors.
Mullenweg wrote:
“I have held my tongue for 15 months, but I can’t abide or normalize the legal violence that @wpengine is inflicting anymore.”
@danielhayesmith quoted the “held my tongue” part, reminding Mullenweg that he’s been quite vocal:
“‘held my tongue’
Brother i hope you don’t truly believe that because there are literally multiple interviews, blog posts, and tweets of you very much not doing that.”
To which Matt responded that there was much more that he hadn’t said:
“Oh, the things I could have said! I was trying to stay as factual and conciliatory as possible. I still am.
I want what’s best for @WordPress, and that’s not having two of the top companies waste so many resources in this.”
Among the supporters, @MattMickiewicz offered:
“…sorry you’re having to go through this legal warfare. Devastating.”
Yet @davidtsolheim explained how the negative sentiment generated by Mullenweg’s attacks on WP Engine caused him to stop recommending WordPress.
He wrote:
“Honestly your position on the WP issue pushed me away from WordPress and I haven’t recommended it in about 2 years because I as a vendor need to trust the people leading the software I recommend.”
Only WordPress Is Losing Market Share
This phenomenon of market share drop is largely a WordPress problem, it’s not an industry-wide issue. For 2026 as of today, virtually all the other top content management platforms are holding steady and growing. Only Joomla is showing a modest decline and that’s only of 0.1 percentage point.
This decline in WordPress market share isn’t an anomaly at W3Techs. Real-world data from the HTTPArchive confirms that WordPress is losing users.
The HTTPArchive Adoption metric tracks how many unique websites are utilizing a specific website framework or CMS over a given a time period.
Screenshot Of HttpArchive Adoption Rate
Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace are all showing modest increases in market share.
Shopify: 0.20 Point Increase
- Jan 2026: 5.00%
- Feb 2026: 5.10%
- Mar 2026: 5.10%
- Apr 2026: 5.10%
- May 2026: 5.20%
Wix: 0.10 Point Increase
- Jan 2026: 4.20%
- Feb 2026: 4.20%
- Mar 2026: 4.20%
- Apr 2026: 4.30%
- May 2026: 4.30%
Squarespace: 0.10 Increase
- Jan 2026: 2.40%
- Feb 2026: 2.50%
- Mar 2026: 2.50%
- Apr 2026: 2.50%
- May 2026: 2.50%
Webflow: Holding Steady
- Jan 2026: 0.90%
- Feb 2026: 0.90%
- Mar 2026: 0.90%
- Apr 2026: 0.90%
- May 2026: 0.90%
Duda: Holding Steady
- Jan 2026: 0.70%
- Feb 2026: 0.70%
- Mar 2026: 0.70%
- Apr 2026: 0.70%
- May 2026: 0.70%
Astro Is Growing Exponentially
Meanwhile, the Astro website framework is growing exponentially month over month according to stats on BestOfJS. Astro began the year with 4.59 million downloads in January and ended the month of April with 9.24 million downloads. At this rate of growth it is fair to label the Astro framework as rapidly growing.
Astro’s Rate Of Downloads
- January 4.59M
- February 5.36M
- March 7.72M
- April 9.24M
WordPress May Yet Bounce Back
The statistics published by W3Techs are hard to ignore. It’s quite clear that WordPress’ market share is eroding. Nevertheless, WordPress recently published a major update that may renew interest from users, especially once plugin, theme, and page builder developers begin releasing more AI-based solutions. The community around WordPress is strong, and many people rely on it for their businesses. It’s difficult to imagine a world without WordPress.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/LOVE YOU
