Sources & References

All statistics and claims on why-php.com are backed by verifiable sources. Here's where we get our facts.

1 Market Statistics

W3Techs - PHP Usage Statistics

PHP market share (72.9% of websites with known server-side language as of Dec 2025)

W3Techs - WordPress Usage

WordPress powers 43% of all websites (810+ million sites)

2 PHP Ecosystem

Packagist Statistics API

400,000+ packages, 66+ billion downloads

Wikipedia - Composer

Composer package manager, first released March 1, 2012 (13 years mature)

Symfony Download Statistics

Symfony framework download and usage statistics

The PHP Foundation

Official PHP Foundation backing PHP language development

PHP Foundation Open Collective

PHP Foundation funding and corporate sponsors

3 Enterprise Case Studies

Business of Apps - Facebook Statistics

Facebook/Meta usage data (3+ billion daily active users)

Meta Investor Relations

Official Meta quarterly reports and financials

Wikipedia Statistics

Wikipedia traffic data (16+ billion page views/month)

Etsy Investor Relations

Etsy financial data ($12.6B annual GMV, ~95M active buyers)

Salesforce - Slack Acquisition

Slack acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion

Intuit - Mailchimp Acquisition

Mailchimp acquired by Intuit for $12 billion

SaveMyCent - Magento Statistics

Magento e-commerce platform statistics

4 Salary & Cost Data

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024

Comprehensive developer salary data by technology and region

Salary Expert

Developer salary comparisons across technologies and regions

5 PHP Standards & Interoperability

PHP-FIG (PHP Framework Interop Group)

PHP Standards Recommendations (PSRs) for autoloading, coding style, HTTP interfaces, and more

All statistics are sourced from publicly available data and are regularly updated. Market data from W3Techs is refreshed daily. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us.