Brief overview of WordPress development
WordPress began in 2003 as a lightweight blogging tool. Today it powers a huge share of the modern web: personal blogs, small business sites, news portals, e-commerce stores, membership platforms, and more.
This combination of flexibility, ownership, and an open-source community explains why WordPress usage and overall popularity continue to grow every year.
By looking at real, up-to-date WordPress statistics you can better understand how strong the ecosystem is and why it remains a safe long-term choice for most website projects.
If you want a site that takes advantage of everything in these statistics, you can learn more about my custom WordPress website development service, or start by reading how much a website really costs in 2025.
How many websites use WordPress in 2025? (Quick WordPress usage statistics)
If you are asking how many websites use WordPress, or what percentage of websites use WordPress in 2025, here are the key numbers based on the latest W3Techs and industry reports:
- 43.2% of all websites on the internet run on WordPress.
- Among websites with a detectable CMS, WordPress holds a 60.4% CMS market share – far ahead of any competitor.
- Different reports estimate between ~480 million and ~590 million websites built on WordPress, depending on how total sites are counted and which time period in 2025 is measured.
- Only about 28.5% of websites use no detectable CMS at all, while the rest rely on tools such as WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, or custom systems.
- WordPress 6 powers over 90% of active WordPress sites, which means most real-world installations run on a modern, actively maintained version.
In other words, when people search for “how many WordPress sites are there?” or “how many websites on the internet use WordPress?”, the practical answer is: well over half a billion sites, and almost every second site that uses a CMS.
CMS market share in 2025
Current W3Techs WordPress market share data shows a very clear picture of the CMS landscape. WordPress is still the dominant platform by a huge margin:
- WordPress – 43.2% of all websites, 60.4% share among sites using a known CMS.
- Shopify – around 4.9% of all websites, about 6.8% CMS market share.
- Wix – about 4.1% of all websites, 5.8% CMS market share.
- Squarespace – roughly 2.4% of all websites.
- Joomla, Drupal, Webflow and others together make up only a small slice of the remaining market.
Compared with W3Techs WordPress market share numbers from 2024, the 2025 data shows a stable picture: WordPress is no longer exploding in growth, but it is still keeping a comfortable lead over every other CMS.
Source: W3Techs – Usage statistics and market share of content management systems
Historical growth: WordPress traffic trends 2003–2024
WordPress traffic trends history from 2003–2024 shows how this CMS slowly turned into the default choice for new websites.
- On 1 January 2013, WordPress powered about 17.4% of all websites.
- By the end of 2024, that share had grown to around 43–44% of the web.
- Throughout the last decade, hundreds of new WordPress sites have been launched daily, often outpacing competing platforms by a factor of five or more.
Even if growth has slowed slightly in the last few years, WordPress usage statistics 2025 still show a strong, mature platform with deep roots in the web – not a short-term trend.
How many WordPress themes are there?
When developers and business owners evaluate WordPress popularity, they often look at how many themes are available.
- The official WordPress.org Theme Directory lists around 14,000 free themes.
- ThemeForest alone offers about 12,000 premium WordPress themes for different niches.
- Independent shops and custom theme providers push the total number of available WordPress themes well above 30,000.
For most projects this means you can start with a battle-tested theme (such as Hello Elementor, Astra, Divi, GeneratePress, or Newspaper) and then customize it instead of building from scratch.
Sources: WordPress.org – Themes directory , WordPress.org – Plugins directory , WP Odyssey – How many WordPress plugins are there in 2025?
Most popular WordPress themes
Analyses of the top 1 million websites (for example by BuiltWith) still show a familiar list of popular themes:
- Hello Elementor
- Astra
- Divi
- GeneratePress
- Newspaper
On ThemeForest, long-time bestsellers such as Avada, The7, BeTheme, Enfold, and Flatsome continue to dominate total sales. These themes stay popular because they are regularly updated, have large user communities, and ship with many ready-made layouts.
How much do WordPress themes cost?
WordPress theme pricing is still very flexible in 2025:
- You can launch with a free theme if you are on a tight budget.
- Most premium themes cost somewhere between $40 and $120.
- Developer clubs and theme memberships usually range from $48 to $399 per year, depending on how many sites and products you need.
- Lifetime access plans average around $250–300 and can be cost-effective if you actively build multiple WordPress sites every year.
How many WordPress plugins are there in 2025?
If you are looking for WordPress plugin directory number of plugins 2025, the ecosystem is larger than ever:
- The official WordPress Plugin Directory now lists 60,000+ free plugins.
- CodeCanyon adds 5,000+ premium plugins on top of that.
- WooCommerce.com, Codester, CodeGrape, YITH and many independent developers provide thousands of additional paid plugins.
Realistically, this puts the total number of available WordPress plugins well above 70,000, and the number keeps growing. In fact, the official Plugins team reported that new plugin submissions nearly doubled in 2025 compared with the previous year.
Most popular WordPress plugins
Some plugins have become almost standard on WordPress websites because they solve common problems like design, forms, SEO, caching, backups, and security. In the official directory, several plugins have 5–10+ million active installations, including:
- Elementor
- Contact Form 7
- Yoast SEO
- Classic Editor
- WooCommerce
- Akismet
- WPForms
- LiteSpeed Cache
- All-in-One WP Migration
- Wordfence Security
These numbers make it clear that WordPress usage is not just about the core CMS – the real power comes from the plugin ecosystem that lets you add almost any feature without custom development.
How many websites use WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a key reason many businesses choose WordPress instead of a closed SaaS platform. Current WooCommerce statistics show:
- WooCommerce is used by 8.8% of all websites worldwide.
- Among sites with a detectable CMS, WooCommerce has around a 12.3% CMS market share.
- Industry estimates based on W3Techs and Netcraft data suggest that this equals roughly 120 million websites powered by WooCommerce.
- Across pure e-commerce platforms, WooCommerce typically holds between 20% and 35% of all online stores, depending on the dataset and methodology.
So when you look at how many websites are built on WordPress specifically for online stores, WooCommerce continues to rank as the most widely adopted e-commerce solution globally.
Source: W3Techs – Usage statistics and market share of WordPress , W3Techs – Usage statistics and market share of WooCommerce
Conclusion: what these WordPress statistics mean for your next website
Updated WordPress usage statistics for 2025 show a very consistent picture:
- WordPress powers around 43% of all websites and more than 60% of sites using a known CMS.
- There are hundreds of millions of active WordPress sites, supported by tens of thousands of themes and over 70,000 plugins.
- WooCommerce alone runs on millions of online stores and close to one in ten websites on the entire internet.
For most new projects this means that building on WordPress is still a safe, future-proof choice. You benefit from a proven platform, a huge talent pool of WordPress developers, and an ecosystem that keeps growing every year – while still keeping full control over your content, hosting, and long-term SEO.
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