Companies Using Polylang

Polylang is the free side of WordPress translation, and our crawl mostly sees the free side. I run the detection systems behind these counts, so here is what the rule looks for. A domain counts when it sets Polylang's language cookie or shows its language switcher. In a random sample of 300 live Polylang domains, 253 of the 264 homepages that loaded showed Polylang. Our October 2026 crawl finds 264,705 domains, 183,840 matched to a company, second in Translation & Localization with 31.72%.

Free or Pro

The cookie and the switcher look the same in both editions. The redirect header doesn't. When Polylang sends a visitor to the right language, it signs the redirect as "Polylang" or "Polylang Pro". Of the sampled homepages that redirected that way, 60 named the free plugin and 9 named Pro, about 13%. Large companies pay more often: among the 90 largest companies we checked, 8 of the 20 that sent the header ran Pro. WP SYNTEX sells Pro from €99 a year excluding VAT, with renewals at half price, and Polylang for WooCommerce from €99 a year (checked 15 October 2026).

Sales signal: on a Polylang list, assume free unless the header says otherwise. Large companies are the exception, and the likeliest to pay for add-ons and support.

Domains, sites and the WPML race

WPML leads by 7,847 domains, 272,552 to 264,705. Counting sites changes the picture. In a random sample, 4 of 328 Polylang domains (1.2%) forwarded to another domain, against 49 of 354 WPML domains (13.8%), many of them a company's spare domains pointing at its main site. Take those out and Polylang very likely runs on more distinct websites than WPML. We can't yet say how much of the gap is real and how much comes from how each plugin shows up after a redirect.

Sales signal: for market sizing, Polylang's count is close to a count of sites. WPML's needs deduping first.

What the monthly line shows

The chart reads 183,324 in June, 213,725 in July, 242,896 in August, 263,167 in September and 264,705 in October. Most of that rise is our crawl, not new sites. The domains we crawl turn over every month, dead ones leaving and new ones arriving, and our coverage and detection widened through the summer. The line was almost flat between September and October. Since tracking began on 16 March 2026, 25,249 domains dropped Polylang on at least one hostname, and 3,513 of them (13.9%) still run it on another.

"Polylang is the plugin small European businesses install themselves. Fewer than one in seven of our sampled sites that named their edition ran Pro, and the free plugin probably runs on more distinct websites than WPML." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: the pool is large and stable. Time outreach to events on the site, such as a redesign, rather than to the chart.

Who the customers are

55.3% of matched companies with a known size have 1 to 10 employees, 26.94% have 11 to 50, and 17.32% were founded in the 2020s. WPML's base is bigger and older: 49.07% have 1 to 10 employees and 12.21% were founded in the 2020s. The 2,898 companies above 1,000 staff include whole groups that standardised on Polylang. Servier has 22 domains in our owner census, the most of any named owner. VINCI shows up on its Leonard innovation site, on VINCI Energies' building-solutions site and through Actemium, VINCI Energies' industry brand, which alone has 10 domains. Lumen runs Polylang on its Asia-Pacific site, Keurig Dr Pepper on its corporate site, Bouygues and Havas on theirs.

Sales signal: in French groups the buyer is often a central web team running dozens of brand sites on one stack, so a group-wide deal for licences, support or translation is realistic.

Where it's used

Spain (19,230 matched companies), France (15,745), Germany (14,896), Italy (11,942) and Poland (10,473) lead. Polylang beats WPML in France, in Poland, where it has 2.1 times WPML's 4,895, and in Turkey (6,976 to 2,828). WP SYNTEX offers support in English and French, according to its site. The United States is seventh with 6,593. By industry, Business Consulting and Services leads at 4.3%, and Legal Services (1.86%) and Non-profit Organizations (1.75%) make the top ten, which looks like brochure sites that need a second language, not a shop.

Sales signal: in Poland and Turkey, Polylang rather than WPML is the default. Agencies and translation vendors selling there should filter on Polylang first.

Sharing a site with rivals

1,856 domains run Polylang and GTranslate today, out of 2,682 that ran both at some point since March, the largest overlap among the three big plugins. The two do different jobs, so they sit side by side. Only 899 run Polylang with WPML and 178 with Weglot. None of these pairs passes our switching tests, so the overlap is coexistence, not migration.

"Nearly seven in ten domains that ever ran Polylang and GTranslate together still run both. That's a working pair, not a switch in progress." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: a site running Polylang and GTranslate is maintaining two kinds of translation at once. That's the opening for a single tool that handles both.

The stack around it

Across 263,710 clean live domains, WordPress shows on 99.33% and Elementor on 37.34%, against 27.98% on WPML's domains. Google Analytics is on 52.55% (WPML: 64.26%). WooCommerce runs on 13.35% of live domains (35,328 of 264,612), against 18.88% for WPML. Consent comes mostly from free plugins, CookieYes on 9.88% and Complianz on 9.72%, and Cookiebot is on 2.57%, less than half its WPML share.

Sales signal: Polylang sites are lighter, cheaper builds. Lead with things that are free to start, and save paid upgrades for the minority running WooCommerce.

Key takeaways

1. 264,705 domains, second in Translation & Localization with 31.72%, 7,847 behind WPML.

2. Only 1.2% of sampled Polylang domains forward elsewhere, against 13.8% of WPML's, so on distinct sites it is probably ahead.

3. Mostly free: 9 of 69 sampled sites that named their edition ran Pro, but 8 of 20 among the largest companies.

4. Small, young, European customers, with clear leads over WPML in France, Poland and Turkey.

5. Polylang shares 1,856 domains with GTranslate, the biggest overlap among the three big plugins.

How to use this list

Filter by country and company size, and check the redirect header if you need paying customers only. For the full list of 264,705 Polylang domains with company, size and stack data, explore TechnologyChecker.io.