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.
Initially Just A Modest Decline
WP Declines For 5 Consecutive Quarters
- 2025 Jan 43.6%
- 2025 Apr 43.5%
- 2025 Jul 43.4%
- 2025 Oct 43.3%
- 2026 Jan 43.0%
43.6 – 43.0 = 0.60. That modest decline could almost be explained as a rounding error. But it’s more than that: it is a trend, five quarters of consecutive decline. What happened next is that the pace of that decline doubled.
Market Share Decline Quickens
The pace of decline quickened beginning in December 2025 and consistently maintained that pace through May 27, 2026, where the W3Techs data currently ends. WordPress market share stood at 43.20% in December 2025 and declined to 41.90% by May 27, 2026. That’s a drop of 1.3 percentage points in six months, double what it was for the entire year of 2025 (January 1, 2025 – January 1, 2026).
Here is the six month consecutive 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%
Some may shrug that it’s only 1.3 percentage points. What makes this decline notable is that it’s part of a larger trend that stretches back five consecutive quarters and that the pace of that decline has now doubled.
Further, this is a consistent trend; there is something to see here. Instead of waiting for a five or ten percent drop, wouldn’t it be prudent to at least consider why the pace of decline is getting faster?
Let’s Consider The Pace Of Decline
The other platforms listed listed in the current W3Techs graph are either stable, or show modest growth or decline. None of the platforms display the level of market share instability that WordPress shows.
Screenshot Of W3Techs Quarterly Market Share Data
Here are selected takeaways from the above graph that tracks market share from May 2025 to May 27, 2026.
Platforms With Modest Gains
- Wix: +0.6
- Shopify: +0.4
- Squarespace: +0.2
- Webflow: +0.1
Stable Platforms
Duda: No change
Platforms With Declining Market Share
- WordPress: -1.6
- Joomla: -0.3
- Drupal: 0.1
This Trend Has Been Building For Years
Katie Keith of Barn2Plugins noticed something was going on back in 2023.
She wrote:
“The data shows that WordPress has plateaued compared to other CMS’s, and is slightly losing market share. We can also see this anecdotally. Based on our experience at Barn2, and our interactions with other plugin companies, we can confirm that most WordPress companies reported slower growth in 2022 than in previous years.”
Her article lists the possible reasons for the 2023 WordPress slow down:
- Increased competition
- Security concerns
- Poor usability
- Negativity over Gutenberg
She’s right about WordPress having stronger competitors. For example, Wix was long known for its poor performance metrics. That’s not longer the case. Not only does Wix consistently beat WordPress on Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV) performance metrics, WordPress consistently ranks last for CWV in the HTTPArchive CWV technology comparisons which are based on real-world website visits.
Another Possible Reason For Declining 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.
Did those actions cause WordPress to begin losing market share?
The W3Techs quarterly market share report shows that WordPress enjoyed a period of moderate growth before Mullenweg’s conflict and then a downturn immediately after.
W3Techs Quarterly Market Share Report
The period in green precedes Mullenweg’s WPE conflict. The period marked in red corresponds to the period after it. The data shows a clear correlation.
Moderate Growth And Stability Pre-Conflict
- April 2023: 43.2%
- July 2023: 43.1%
- October 2023: 43.1%
- January 2024: 43.1%
- April 2024: 43.3%
- July 2024: 43.4%
- October 2023: 43.5%
Market Share Decline During Conflict Era
- January 2025: 43.6%
- April 2025: 43.5%
- July 2025: 43.4%
- October 2025: 43.3%
- January 2026: 43.0%
- April 2026: 42.5%
- May 2026 41.9%
Only WordPress Is Losing Market Share At This Pace
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
