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February 2023 Web Server Survey

In the February 2023 survey we received responses from 1,127,630,293 sites across 270,727,775 unique domains, and 12,142,793 web-facing computers. This reflects a loss of 4,638,508 sites, 240,148 domains and 13,907 computers.

OpenResty had the largest percentage growth in sites this month: it is now used by 95,176,082 sites, an increase of 2,884,258 (+3.13%) since last month. This brings its share of sites to 8.44%, up from 8.15% (+0.29pp). OpenResty’s market share by domain count remained stable, with a slight 0.01pp increase this month – its small loss of 14,039 domains was counteracted by the greater loss of domains across all vendors this month.

Cloudflare continues to grow, gaining 1,669,867 sites (+1.49%) and 500,432 domains (+1.89%) since our January survey. Following Cloudflare becoming the most commonly used web server vendor within the top million sites last month, it has started to cement its position: gaining 672 sites (+0.31%) of the top million sites this month, giving it a 21.71% market share (+0.07pp).

Meanwhile, Apache lost 626 sites (-0.29%) in the top million sites, bringing its share to 21.34% (-0.06pp). Outside of the top million, Apache saw more significant losses, netting a decrease of 2,593,754 sites (-1.11%) and 434,071 domains (-0.74%).

Similarly to Apache, nginx lost a significant number of domains this month, being down by 483,620 domains since our January survey (-0.66%). However, nginx maintained its overall site count and even gained 219 of the top million busiest sites, giving it a 21.23% share (+0.02pp) within the top million sites.

The largest loss in sites for a major vendor this month comes from Microsoft, which is down 2,866,173 sites (-9.59%) and 74,094 domains (-0.98%). This continues its consistent downwards trend since December 2018.

Vendor News

  • Apache 2.4.55 was released on 17th January 2023. This includes a fix for the CVE-2022-36760 vulnerability. This vulnerability affects configurations using mod_proxy_ajp, a proxy server which forwards requests to an application server using the Apache JServ Protocol (AJP). The vulnerability allowed attackers to smuggle requests to the backend AJP server without being correctly processed by the proxy server.
  • AWS announced general availability of its Asia Pacific (Melbourne) region, as well as general availability of Local Zones in Perth and Santiago.
  • Microsoft released Azure Load Testing, a service that can test a web application’s resilience to high load.
Total number of websites
Web server market share
Developer January 2023 Percent February 2023 Percent Change
nginx 295,678,304 26.11% 295,723,793 26.23% 0.11
Apache 233,636,177 20.63% 231,042,423 20.49% -0.15
Cloudflare 112,159,331 9.91% 113,829,198 10.09% 0.19
OpenResty 92,291,824 8.15% 95,176,082 8.44% 0.29
Web server market share for active sites
Developer January 2023 Percent February 2023 Percent Change
Apache 42,130,966 20.76% 41,819,892 20.70% -0.06
nginx 38,926,019 19.18% 38,997,703 19.30% 0.12
Cloudflare 23,424,225 11.54% 22,557,491 11.17% -0.38
Google 21,000,053 10.35% 20,549,494 10.17% -0.18

For more information see Active Sites

Web server market share for top million busiest sites
Developer January 2023 Percent February 2023 Percent Change
Cloudflare 216,403 21.64% 217,075 21.71% 0.07
Apache 214,022 21.40% 213,396 21.34% -0.06
nginx 212,049 21.20% 212,268 21.23% 0.02
Microsoft 52,143 5.21% 52,414 5.24% 0.03
Web server market share for computers
Developer January 2023 Percent February 2023 Percent Change
nginx 4,700,609 38.67% 4,701,104 38.72% 0.05
Apache 3,322,386 27.33% 3,302,887 27.20% -0.13
Microsoft 1,271,547 10.46% 1,242,076 10.23% -0.23
Web server market share for domains
Developer January 2023 Percent February 2023 Percent Change
nginx 73,433,422 27.10% 72,949,802 26.95% -0.15
Apache 58,425,670 21.56% 57,991,600 21.42% -0.14
OpenResty 38,926,332 14.37% 38,912,294 14.37% 0.01
Cloudflare 26,424,629 9.75% 26,925,061 9.95% 0.19