WordPress market share is slipping, and the data is worth a look

You’ve probably heard the stat that WordPress powers one third of the web. WordPress has held a remarkably steady position for years, sitting at 43% of all websites, barely moving from one quarter to the next. That stability was part of why it became the default starting point for so many builds. But recent figures show that trend has started to change.

According to W3Techs, WordPress now powers 41.5% of all websites as of June 2026, down from 43.2% in December 2025. That is still an enormous share of the web, larger than any other content management system by a wide margin. But the direction has changed, and it has been consistent enough to take seriously.

Six months of consecutive decline

Back in 2023 I attended a conference where Mathias Biilmann spoke about composable architecture and highlighted that WordPress growth had plateaued for the first time. As reported by Search Engine Journal, WordPress has now seen six straight months of falling market share.

The monthly figures look like this:

• December 2025: 43.2%

• January 2026: 43.0%

• February 2026: 42.8%

• March 2026: 42.7%

• April 2026: 42.5%

• Late May 2026: 41.9%

That is a drop of 1.3 percentage points across six months. On its own, the number is small, but what makes it notable is the pace. The decline across the whole of 2025 was roughly half that, so the rate has effectively doubled. This is not a sudden collapse. It is a slow, steady trend that has picked up speed.

Envato’s recent fee changes are also worth noting. From July 2026, it is proposing to move all authors to a non-exclusive model and replace its previous tiered structure with a standard 50% author fee.

That is not direct evidence of WordPress decline, but it does suggest pressure within a marketplace that has long been closely tied to WordPress themes and plugins. As part of the wider picture, it adds to the sense that the ecosystem is becoming more competitive and commercially harder to sustain in its old form.

How other platforms compare

This is largely a WordPress story rather than an industry-wide one. Over the same period, most other content management systems held steady or grew slightly.

Looking at the year to late May 2026, several smaller platforms posted modest gains:

• Wix: up around 0.6 points

• Shopify: up around 0.4 points

• Squarespace: up around 0.2 points

• Webflow: roughly stable

None of these are dramatic numbers, and it would be a stretch to read them as one platform overtaking another. The useful point is simpler. When the largest player loses share at a quickening pace while the rest of the field stays flat or edges up, the trend is specific to WordPress, not a sign that the whole category is shrinking.

The same pattern shows up beyond the larger website builders. Smaller and more specialised CMS platforms are also growing, even if their total share remains much lower than WordPress.

Storyblok, Contentful, Adobe Experience Manager and Sitecore all show continued usage across live websites. Their numbers are not large enough to compare neatly with WordPress in percentage-point terms, but the direction is still useful. WordPress is losing share, while many other CMS platforms are either holding steady or continuing to grow.

A possible link to the WP Engine conflict

There is also a question of timing. Search Engine Journal points to a correlation between the start of WordPress's decline and the public dispute between Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which began in late 2024.

The conflict had practical consequences. WP Engine was temporarily blocked from parts of the plugin update system, contributors were asked to confirm they had no affiliation with the company, and a popular plugin was cloned and offered separately. For many site owners, it raised governance questions they had never thought about before.

It is worth being careful here. Correlation is not proof, and WordPress has faced competition, performance criticism and editor frustration for years. Pinning the entire trend on one dispute would overstate the case. But the period of moderate growth before the conflict, followed by a steady downturn after it, is a pattern the data does show. Whether the two are connected is a fair question to ask, not a settled conclusion.

Where the data leaves us

WordPress is still the most-used content management system by a large distance, and it is not going anywhere soon. At the same time, it has now recorded six consecutive months of decline, at roughly double the rate seen across the previous year, while most competing platforms have stayed flat or grown.

One trend over six months is not a verdict, and WordPress may stabilise or recover, particularly as more AI tooling lands in its ecosystem. For now, the more accurate read is that the market is no longer treating WordPress as the only obvious answer. That shift has been gradual, but the data shows it is real.