In short
Yes, heavily. PHP runs roughly three-quarters of websites with a known server-side language, mostly because of WordPress, and it powers large modern applications through frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony. Since version 7 it has been fast, and version 8 added a type system, attributes, and just-in-time compilation. It is the right choice for content sites, CMS work, and teams who know it; it is a weaker fit for real-time applications, heavy computation, or teams building a JavaScript-first stack. Its bad reputation describes the PHP of 2008.
The numbers
Surveys of server-side languages have put PHP at around 74–77% of websites where the language can be detected, a share that has barely moved in a decade. The bulk of that is WordPress, which runs over 40% of all websites, plus Drupal, Joomla, Magento, MediaWiki and a long tail of business applications. Facebook's early codebase was PHP; Wikipedia, Slack's backend in parts, and Etsy run on it or its descendants.
By any measure of deployed code, PHP is one of the most used languages on earth. By measures of developer enthusiasm, it ranks lower, and the gap between the two is where the question comes from.
Where the reputation came from
PHP in the 2000s was easy to start with and easy to write badly. It mixed HTML and logic in one file, had inconsistent function names, encouraged SQL built by string concatenation, and ran a lot of insecure code written by people who had just learned it. The language's flexibility produced an enormous amount of software and an enormous amount of bad software, and the bad software became the reputation.
That reputation is now mostly describing a language that no longer exists.
What modern PHP looks like
PHP 7 in 2015 roughly doubled performance and began the cleanup. PHP 8, from 2020, added a just-in-time compiler, union and intersection types, named arguments, attributes, enums, readonly properties, match expressions and fibers. Current PHP has a static type system that catches a substantial class of errors, a package manager (Composer) with a mature ecosystem, and a testing culture that would have been unrecognisable fifteen years ago.
Laravel is one of the most productive web frameworks in any language, with conventions for authentication, queues, caching, scheduled jobs, real-time events and testing built in. Symfony underpins much of the ecosystem and suits larger, more structured applications. Either produces code that is typed, tested and organised, and a developer arriving from Rails, Django or Spring will find the shape familiar.
Deployment is trivial, which is an underrated advantage: PHP runs on nearly every host on the planet with no build step and no long-running process to manage. A zero-build static site with a small PHP admin behind it is a pattern we use ourselves, and it is hard to beat for simplicity.
Where PHP is the right choice
Content sites and CMS work. WordPress, and the customisation, plugin and theme work around it, is PHP by definition. So is most of the CMS market.
Business web applications with conventional shapes. Bookings, catalogues, admin panels, portals, e-commerce. Laravel handles these with less code and less infrastructure than most alternatives.
Teams that know it. The best language for a project is usually the one the team can maintain. A capable PHP team will ship a better product in PHP than a mediocre product in a fashionable language.
Cheap, simple hosting requirements. Anything that must run on shared hosting, or be deployed by copying files, or be maintained by a generalist.
Long-lived projects. PHP's backward compatibility is strong, and code written carefully today will run for a decade.
Where it is not
Real-time and persistent connections. WebSockets, streaming, chat. PHP's request-per-process model is the wrong shape; Node.js, Go or Elixir fit naturally. PHP can do it with additional tooling, but it is working against its grain.
Heavy computation and data work. Machine learning, scientific computing, large-scale data pipelines. Python owns this space through its libraries.
JavaScript-first stacks. If the front end is React or a similar framework and the team wants one language end to end, a Node.js or TypeScript backend is the natural fit and Next.js-style architectures assume it.
Very large engineering organisations with specific needs. At the scale of a few hundred engineers, teams choose languages for reasons of tooling, hiring and performance that do not apply to most businesses.
Hiring and longevity
PHP developers are plentiful and, because the language is unfashionable, often less expensive than developers in trendier ecosystems for equivalent skill. The language is actively developed with annual releases, WordPress is not going anywhere, and Laravel's community is one of the healthiest in web development. A business choosing PHP in 2026 is not choosing something that will be abandoned.
The honest summary
PHP is a mature, fast, well-tooled language with an unfashionable name and the largest deployed footprint on the web. Choose it for the things it is good at, with a modern framework and modern practices, and it will serve for years. Choose it because it is what the team knows, and that is a fine reason too. Reject it because of what it was in 2008, and you are making a tech stack decision on a reputation rather than a fit. If you are weighing it for a specific project, book a call and we will tell you plainly whether it suits.
Common questions
What percentage of websites use PHP?
Surveys of sites with a detectable server-side language have consistently put PHP around 74–77%, a share that has held for roughly a decade. Most of that is WordPress, which alone runs over 40% of all websites, plus other PHP-based CMSs and countless business applications.
Is PHP a dying language?
No. It receives annual major releases, version 8 brought a type system and a JIT compiler, and its frameworks, particularly Laravel and Symfony, have active communities. Its share of new greenfield startups has fallen relative to JavaScript and Python, but its deployed base is enormous and stable, and demand for developers who can maintain it is steady.
Is PHP good for building web applications?
Yes, for conventional web applications such as portals, booking systems, catalogues, admin tools and e-commerce. Laravel provides authentication, queues, caching, scheduling and testing out of the box, and deployment is simple. It is a weaker fit for real-time features, heavy computation, or teams that want a single JavaScript codebase end to end.
Is PHP secure?
Modern PHP with a framework is as secure as any mainstream web language; prepared statements, CSRF protection, output escaping and password hashing are built into Laravel and Symfony. The insecure reputation comes from old hand-written code and unmaintained WordPress plugins, which are a maintenance problem rather than a language one.
Should I learn PHP in 2026?
If you want to work on WordPress, agency web work, or business applications, yes; the job market is large and steady. If you are aiming at real-time systems, data science or a JavaScript-first product company, another language will serve better. Learning modern PHP with Laravel is a productive skill and far removed from the language's old reputation.
