Companies Using jQuery CDN

Most library CDNs tell you that a site loads a file. code.jquery.com also tells you which version, because the version sits in the file name. That makes it one of the more useful detections in our crawl. In October 2026 we found 863,027 domains loading a script from it, and matched 460,026 to a company. It ranks 6th of the 60 CDNs we track. Nobody pays for it, so these are sites, not accounts. On 12 October I opened our top 50 company pages in a browser and pulled a sample of the exact file addresses our crawler recorded.

Growth trajectory

The count went from 670,984 in June to 863,027 in October, and 125,714 of that came in one step, to 796,698 in July. That isn't a jQuery revival. The set of domains we crawl turns over every month, with dead sites dropping out and newly found ones added, and our detection signals widen over time; the three months after July added 66,329 between them. Since March 2026, 123,477 domains have dropped the jQuery CDN. When I recounted, about one in eight of those still loaded it on another hostname, so a drop often means one subdomain was rebuilt, not that the company left jQuery.

"You don't adopt the jQuery CDN in 2026. You inherit it, from a theme, a template or a developer who built the site a long time ago." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: don't read the July step as demand. Treat this as an installed base of older front ends.

Who loads it

58.04% of matched companies with a known size have 1 to 10 employees, and 82.40% have 50 or fewer. The base is older than on our other library-CDN profiles: 15.13% were founded in the 2020s, against 18.49% on cdnjs's and 22.65% on Unpkg's, and 30.48% before 2000. The enterprise tail is 8,754 companies above 1,000 staff, and they seldom load it on the main domain: only 9 of our top 50 were detected there. In that top 50, 12 detections sit on investor-relations sites: General Motors, Lockheed Martin, T-Mobile, United Airlines, Northrop Grumman, GE HealthCare, TJX and others. Five more are newsrooms or blogs, such as Medtronic's, 3M's and Cisco's. Two investor sites from our first list, Dell's and Nike's, now serve their own copy of jQuery 3.5.1, so I replaced them.

Sales signal: at a large company, a jQuery CDN hit often marks an IR site, a newsroom or a careers portal. The buyer is whoever owns that property, often a communications team or its agency, not central engineering.

Where and in which sectors

The United States has 129,965 matched companies, then the United Kingdom (38,401), India (33,345) and Brazil (22,271). No industry dominates. Retail leads at 4.42%, Construction is 2nd at 3.5% and the ten largest sectors add up to 29.32%. Construction and Medical Practices (2.59%) ranking this high points to small local-service businesses rather than software companies.

Sales signal: trades, clinics and local retailers are where this list is deepest. Agencies selling site rebuilds or care plans should start there.

Next to the other public CDNs

We found no switching between the jQuery CDN and any rival. Sites load several public CDNs at once: 366,029 domains load both it and cdnjs today, 316,868 load it with jsDelivr and 126,911 with Google Hosted Libraries. For every pair, at least 81% of the domains ever seen with both still load both. Our data can't say why a site stops loading code.jquery.com, but the two I checked, Dell's and Nike's investor sites, had moved to a self-hosted copy.

"When Dell's and Nike's investor sites dropped code.jquery.com, they didn't switch CDNs. They put jQuery on their own servers. For a free file, that's what leaving looks like." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: sites calling three or four CDNs make a ready-made list for web-performance and consolidation work. Each extra host is another DNS lookup and connection before the page renders.

What else these sites run

Across the 830,475 domains in our clean live set, Bootstrap runs on 46.43%, core-js on 41.22%, jQuery UI on 27.13% and jQuery Migrate on 23.39%. Part of Bootstrap's share has a documented cause: its 4.x starter template linked jQuery's slim build from code.jquery.com until the 4.6 docs switched to jsDelivr. WordPress sits on 22.9%, well below its 40.23% on Unpkg's profile. Tailwind CSS on 11.32% shows some newer builds still reach for it.

Sales signal: Bootstrap with jQuery and jQuery Migrate is an older front-end stack. Pitch rebuilds and maintenance here, not React tooling.

The version in the file name

In a sample of 4,044 domains whose first recorded code.jquery.com file was a versioned jQuery core build, 1,986 (49.11%) load a version older than 3.5.0. That release, in April 2020, fixed two moderate cross-site scripting advisories, CVE-2020-11022 and CVE-2020-11023, and every older build in our sample falls inside at least one of their ranges. 772 (19.09%) are still on a 1.x build, 109 of them through jquery-latest.min.js, an address that still served jQuery 1.11.1 when I fetched it on 12 October. The 3.6 line is the most common, with 969. jQuery 4.0.0 shipped on 17 January 2026; 15 sites in the sample use it.

Sales signal: for security and compliance vendors, the version is the hook. A domain on 1.12.4 or 2.2.4 sits inside the published advisory ranges, and our data finds it without touching the site.

What it costs and who runs it

Nothing. The jQuery download page says the library is provided under the MIT license, the CDN's release page credits Fastly for delivery, and jquery.com carries the OpenJS Foundation's copyright. The release page recommends integrity hashes for every file. Of the 41 large-company pages in our candidate list whose HTML linked the script directly, 16 add one; JPMorgan Chase's alumni site does, even on jQuery 1.12.4.

Sales signal: there's no contract to displace. Sell the upgrade path instead: 4.0 is out, and half the sample still runs a build older than the April 2020 security release.

Key takeaways

1. 863,027 domains, 6th of 60 CDNs with 4.12%. These are websites loading a free file, not paying accounts.

2. 49.11% of a 4,044-site sample pin a jQuery build older than 3.5.0; 15 have moved to 4.0.

3. 82.40% of matched companies have 50 staff or fewer, and the base is older than on Unpkg or jsDelivr.

4. Large companies load it on side properties: 12 of our top 50 on investor-relations sites.

5. 366,029 domains load both the jQuery CDN and cdnjs. Public CDNs stack; they don't replace each other.

Working with the list

For an agency, filter to companies with 11 to 200 staff in the United States or the United Kingdom, then open the site and read the jQuery version from the script address. A plain opener: "Your site still loads jQuery 1.12.4 from the public CDN; here's what a supported front end would take." For a security vendor, the IR and newsroom hostnames at large companies are the quickest wins, because they're often outside the main release process. The full list of 863,027 jQuery CDN domains, with company and stack data, is on TechnologyChecker.io.