Companies Using FreeBSD

I run the crawler that records the response headers of every domain we visit. A domain counts on this page when its Server header contains "FreeBSD", with an optional version after it. Our October 2026 crawl puts that at 5,147 domains, 8th of 16 in Operating Systems, with 2,996 matched to a company. On 15 October 2026 I requested all 5,164 domains in our clean set, recorded every header and resolved every address.

What the banner says

FreeBSD's Apache port patches the server so that the platform string reads "FreeBSD" where a source build would print "Unix". 4,831 of the live banners come from Apache. The rest are nginx builds that print "(FreeBSD)" (53), Koala Web Server reporting "FreeBSD 15.0" (19), a few Zope and Synchronet BBS servers, and three company rows whose Apache says "(Unix)" but whose OpenSSL carries FreeBSD's own build tag. Our match isn't case-sensitive, so it reads that tag. Only 22 domains expose a version number, all "15.0", so I publish no version breakdown.

Sales signal: every match is a FreeBSD machine. What it doesn't tell you is who runs it, the site owner or the host.

The host behind a third of it

1,492 of the 5,164 domains (28.89%) resolve to AS34895, hostNET Medien GmbH, which describes itself on hostnet.de as hosting made in Germany, in Bremen, since 1994. 940 of those answer with exactly Apache/2.4.57 (FreeBSD) OpenSSL/1.0.2u mod_fcgid/2.3.9; the rest show older or newer builds of the same stack. 1,259 of the 1,410 .de domains in the set are hostNET's. The second cluster is RealtyProIDX, which designs and hosts IDX websites for estate agents: 142 domains on one AWS address, the same address as realtyproidx.com itself. Then the networks thin out: Amazon 269 in all, Hetzner 186, OVH 153, DigitalOcean 87.

"Nearly three in ten FreeBSD web servers we can see belong to one Bremen hosting company. Take hostNET away and FreeBSD's visible share of the web falls by more than a quarter." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: for hostNET's and RealtyProIDX's customers, the operating system came with the package. Offer them what the package lacks, or approach the host directly.

How much of it is current

4,917 of the 5,164 (95.22%) still answered with a FreeBSD banner. 125 didn't answer, and 122 sent something else, 56 of them a bare "Apache". An earlier random draw of 50 gave 46. Since tracking began on 16 March 2026, 451 domains dropped the banner on at least one hostname, and 51 of those still send it from another. The month counts rose from 4,355 in June to 5,147 in October, partly because the set of domains we crawl turns over every month, dead sites out and new ones in, and partly because our detection widens. Since July the line is nearly flat.

Sales signal: a 95% live rate makes this a reliable list. It isn't growing, so treat it as an installed base.

The age of the stack

The banners carry their OpenSSL version. 1,915 live banners announce OpenSSL 1.0, most of them hostNET's 1.0.2u, and 112 announce 0.9. OpenSSL's project says 1.0.2 has been out of support since 1 January 2020, with paid extended support for premium customers. 1,594 announce an OpenSSL 3 release. The project itself is current: its security page supports stable/15 until 31 December 2029 and stable/14 until 30 November 2028, so the old builds here are the hosts' choice.

Sales signal: a site on an old shared stack can't upgrade it alone. Security scanning, managed WordPress and migration offers fit the 1.0-era hosts' customers; the decision still sits with the host.

Who and where

Germany has 1,299 of the 2,996 matched companies, the United States 480, Spain 105, Austria 86. 69.26% of sized companies have 1 to 10 staff, and only 29 have more than 1,000. Construction (4.83%), business consulting (4.21%), real estate (4.07%) and retail (4.02%) lead, and 45.24% of companies with a founding year predate 2000. The in-house users are universities and a few companies running one service: NTUA's technology transfer office, TU Freiberg's blogs, Vox Telecom's webmail and Bernama's National Day site. Of the 50 companies named in the table below, 44 still sent a FreeBSD banner from their detection URL when I checked, and the six that didn't had moved to nginx, stripped the token, blocked our request or stopped answering.

Sales signal: write German-language offers for owner-run firms with ten years or more behind them.

Overlap, not switching

We publish no switching table for FreeBSD. The few domains that dropped it while gaining another system mostly still run both, so none of those pairs passed our tests. Overlap is hostname-level: 75 domains run a FreeBSD host and an Ubuntu host today, 45 a "(Unix)" host and 20 a Debian host. Those are separate hostnames under one domain, each with its own server.

"FreeBSD's web footprint doesn't migrate. It sits on hosts that chose it years ago and still answer with it." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: don't build a campaign on FreeBSD-to-Linux migrations. There aren't enough of them in our data.

The stack around it

Across the 5,164 domains, Apache shows on 98.33%, OpenSSL on 94.35%, PHP on 58.75% and WordPress on 36.85%. Nginx is on 3.45%. Contao is on 3.52% and mod_dav on 3.87%.

Sales signal: WordPress and Contao agencies in Germany are the closest partners for anything sold into this list.

What it costs

Nothing. FreeBSD's copyright page permits redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification. The FreeBSD Foundation's user list names Netflix, WhatsApp and Sony, none of which shows up in these web banners.

Key takeaways

1. 5,147 domains announce FreeBSD; 95.22% of the clean set still did on 15 October 2026.

2. hostNET hosts 28.89% of the clean set, RealtyProIDX another 142 domains.

3. 1,915 live banners announce OpenSSL 1.0.

4. Germany has 1,299 of 2,996 matched companies; 89.35% of sized companies have 50 or fewer staff.

5. No switching corridor passes our tests.

How to use this list

Split by network first: hostNET customers, RealtyProIDX agents, then self-run servers. Our operating system market share report covers why so few servers disclose an OS. The full list of 5,147 domains, with 2,996 matched companies, is on TechnologyChecker.io.