Web Servers Market Share & Usage Statistics (2026)

Apache HTTP Server runs on 5,365,858 live websites, 36.5% of the 14,679,365 sites we detect using web servers. Below, all 70 tools we detect in this category, ranked by live websites, with market share and 30-day adoption momentum.

Data updated Oct 19, 2026

  • A favicon of Apache HTTP Server
    #1

    Apache HTTP Server

    Companies that use Apache HTTP Server: our October 2026 crawl finds 5,365,858 domains whose web server announces Apache, including FedEx, Shell and AstraZeneca. 1st of 70 in Web Servers, narrowly ahead of Nginx.

    Live websites5,365,858Market Share36.55%Top CountryUnited States
  • A favicon of Nginx
    #2

    Nginx

    Nginx answers on 4,708,036 domains in our live crawl, second among web servers at 33.97% behind Apache.

    Live websites5,101,407Market Share34.75%Top CountryUnited States
  • A favicon of LiteSpeed
    #3

    LiteSpeed

    LiteSpeed is a commercial web server built as a drop-in replacement for Apache, reading the same configuration files while serving requests on its own event-driven engine.

    Live websites2,471,028Market Share16.83%Top CountryUnited States
  • A favicon of OpenResty

    OpenResty

    Companies that use OpenResty: 763,880 domains answer with an OpenResty Server header in our October 2026 crawl once parking pages are removed, often a host's edge.

    Live websites (cleaned)763,880Market Share5.2%Top CountryUnited States
  • A favicon of IIS

    IIS

    Companies that use IIS: our October 2026 crawl finds Microsoft's web server on 434,800 domains, including IQVIA, Gap Inc. and PwC. 9.25% of versioned IIS domains run a release past end of support.

    Live websites434,800Market Share2.96%Top CountryUnited States
  • A favicon of Caddy

    Caddy

    Companies that use Caddy: 68,037 domains answer with a Caddy Server header in our October 2026 crawl, about one in five a Readymag site.

    Live websites68,037Market Share0.46%Top CountryUnited States
  • A favicon of Kestrel

    Kestrel

    Companies that use Kestrel: 26,519 domains answer with Kestrel, the ASP.NET Core web server, in our October 2026 crawl, including S&P Global's Marketplace, Air Products' customer login and Ford's careers site.

    Live websites26,519Market Share0.18%Top CountryUnited States
  • A favicon of Phusion Passenger

    Phusion Passenger

    Companies that use Phusion Passenger: 26,065 domains report the Ruby and Node.js app server in our October 2026 crawl, nearly a quarter of them SportsEngine sites.

    Live websites (cleaned)26,065Market Share0.18%Top CountryUnited States
  • A favicon of Tengine

    Tengine

    Companies that use Tengine: 16,071 domains answer with a Tengine Server header in our October 2026 crawl, after we removed 11,393 Alibaba marketplace store pages.

    Live websites (cleaned)16,071Market Share0.11%Top CountryChina
  • A favicon of gunicorn

    gunicorn

    Companies that use gunicorn: 7,728 domains answer with gunicorn's own Server header in our October 2026 crawl, including Tate, IDEXX and the UK National Archives.

    Live websites7,728Market Share0.05%Top CountryUnited States

Web Servers Market Data

Adoption and 30-day momentum across 70 web servers technologies, measured from our live detection crawl.

Biggest Movers

Net domains gained or lost in the last 30 days — 49 of 70 technologies moved. A further 1 tool is left out because we began detecting it inside this window, so we cannot tell growth from a first sighting.
Top gainers
Top losers

Expert Insight: Web Servers Market Share & Momentum

Three servers hold about 89% of the web, and almost the only thing that moves is hosts reconfiguring.

MS
Mehmet SuleymanCEO & Co-founder, TechnologyChecker
Data as of 2026-10-19 · Reviewed 2026-10-19

Apache runs on about 5.1M of the 13.9M domains where we can read a server header, roughly 37%. Nginx is on about 4.7M and LiteSpeed on 2.4M, so the three together are close to 89%. The largest 30-day gain anywhere in the category is Google Web Server, at about 9,300 domains, on a row that held about 1,000 in our previous snapshot. Everything else that moves in this table moves because an operator changed a configuration, not because a site changed software.

Market share

A three-way split, and one of them is really the second

Apache about 37%, Nginx about 34%, LiteSpeed about 18%. OpenResty at roughly 5% is an Nginx distribution rather than a separate server, so the Nginx family is closer to 40% of the category and is the largest thing here. IIS is at 3% and everything below it is under half a percent. The long tail of 68 entries adds almost nothing.

Movers

Nothing in this category grows

The biggest 30-day gain is Google Web Server at about 9,300 domains, which is Google's own server answering for more of the domains we crawl, not anyone installing one. Second is Angie, an Nginx fork, in the hundreds. That is the whole growth story. Over the longer window Apache is down about 75,000 while Nginx is up about 12,000 and OpenResty about 20,000, so the Nginx family is the only part of the top five that isn't shrinking over 90 days.

Churn

The 4.9% turnover is hosting operations, not migrations

LiteSpeed dropped about 199,000 domains over 30 days, roughly 8% of its base, and OpenResty about 128,000 while adding back almost as many. No fleet of sites reinstalls its web server in a month. What changes is what the header says, and a host that reconfigures a proxy layer or upgrades a control panel moves tens of thousands of domains at once. Read big swings here as one operator making one change.

Trend

The measurement is unusually honest, with one blind spot

Every entry here is matched on the Server response header, which the origin sends on every request and which changes the moment configuration changes. There are no verification records in this category and nothing that outlives the software it describes, so both the counts and the turnover mean what they appear to mean. The blind spot is deliberate suppression: an operator can strip or rewrite the header, and a CDN in front of the origin often reports itself instead, so absence from this table is not evidence a server is unused.

Web Servers Overview
Active Domains14.7MRunning web servers tech
Technologies70Tracked in this category
Net 30-Day Growth-310,560413,913 adopted · 724,473 dropped
Domain Index29.9MLive business domains crawled

Market Share

Apache HTTP Server leads with 36.55% of active domains
  • A favicon of Apache HTTP ServerApache HTTP Server36.55%
  • A favicon of NginxNginx34.75%
  • A favicon of LiteSpeedLiteSpeed16.83%
  • A favicon of OpenRestyOpenResty5.2%
  • A favicon of IISIIS2.96%
  • A favicon of CaddyCaddy0.46%
  • …Others3.3%
Live detection data · as of 2026-10-19

Web Servers
FAQ.

What is Web Servers software?

Web Servers covers the tools a site can load or configure to handle this part of its stack. We detect one of the 70 web servers tools in this category on 14,679,365 live sites. A detection means we found the technology on the site, which is not the same as a paid account.

What are the most popular web servers platforms?

Across 14,679,365 detected sites, the most widely found web servers tools are: Apache HTTP Server (36.55% share, 5,365,858 sites), Nginx (34.75% share, 5,101,407 sites), LiteSpeed (16.83% share, 2,471,028 sites). Others we see regularly include OpenResty and IIS.

Which web servers tool has the largest market share?

Apache HTTP Server is the most widely detected web servers tool at 36.55% share, on 5,365,858 sites. The largest share of those sites belongs to Construction companies, and to businesses in the 1-10 employee band.

Which industries use web servers software the most?

The industries with the most detected sites in this category are Construction, Retail, IT Services and IT Consulting, Business Consulting and Services, Real Estate. Industry mix follows where these tools get installed, so a category carried by website builders or agency templates will lean toward the verticals those platforms serve rather than the vendor's target buyer.

Which countries have the highest adoption of web servers tools?

We detect the most web servers sites in United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Brazil, Netherlands. Country here is the company's registered location in our enriched data rather than where the site is served from, so read it as a ranking of markets rather than a measure of any single one.

How do I choose the right web servers platform?

Start from your own size, industry and primary use case rather than from share. Apache HTTP Server, Nginx and LiteSpeed are the three we detect most often in this category, which tells you what is common, not what fits you. Compare their integrations, pricing tiers and support commitments against the workflow you actually run, and check each vendor's own documentation for current capabilities.

How many companies use web servers software?

TechnologyChecker.io detects web servers tools on 14,679,365 live sites. That is a count of sites carrying the technology, not a count of paying customers, and a site running two tools in this category is counted under each. We crawl 2 billion+ URLs across 29.9M live business domains each sweep.

What is the source of this data?

TechnologyChecker.io's web crawling and technology detection platform. We've logged 2.12 billion total detections over 20+ years, covering 40,000+ technologies across the 29.9M live business domains we successfully crawl each sweep. Detection methods include JavaScript analysis, HTTP headers, HTML patterns, DNS records, and certificate transparency logs.