In the May 2020 survey we received responses from 1,238,024,212 sites across 261,192,350 unique domains and 9,892,834 web-facing computers. This reflects a gain of 224,000 computers and 1.10 million domains, but a loss of 8.10 million sites.

nginx lost the greatest number of sites, with 14.2 million fewer than in April, but conversely had by far the greatest increases in unique domain names (+1.50 million, +2.02%), and web-facing computers (+137,000, +4.43%) this month. OpenResty, which is based on nginx, also saw a large 237,000 domain count increase to reach 7.15 million – the second largest increase in domains for any vendor this month.

Apache had losses in most metrics, dropping 244,000 domains. It did, however, come away with 6.88 million more sites and 45,000 more computers this month than last. Apache still leads in the active sites, computers, and top one million sites metrics.

Microsoft lost out on all metrics this month, dropping by 5.08 million sites and 175,000 unique domains. Both Apache and Microsoft have been on slow long-term downward trends in most metrics. Although they have both increased their count of web-facing computers over time, nginx has seen much stronger growth in comparison. Despite running on a 17.9% share of domain names and 16.4% share of computers, Microsoft holds a much smaller 4.72% share of active sites.

LiteSpeed currently serves 4.20 million domains, giving it a 1.61% market share. It has a slightly higher 1.88% share amongst the top one million sites. LiteSpeed has seen consistent growth, and has had a 23.3% domain count growth over the last 12 months.

Vendor News

Nginx released a new stable version of the nginx web server. nginx version 1.18.0 incorporates additional features which have been introduced in the mainline 1.17.x nginx versions over time. Nginx also released version 1.17.0 of the Nginx Unit application server.

LiteSpeed released new 1.6.13 and 1.7.1 versions of their OpenLiteSpeed web server, introducing bug fixes, security features, updates from their LSQUIC library, CentOS 8 support, and more.

Total number of websites

Web server market share

Developer April 2020 Percent May 2020 Percent Change
nginx 459,886,788 36.91% 445,724,550 36.00% -0.90
Apache 308,143,708 24.73% 315,019,262 25.45% 0.72
Microsoft 160,121,865 12.85% 155,042,311 12.52% -0.33
Google 42,648,748 3.42% 44,304,867 3.58% 0.16
Web server market share for active sites

Developer April 2020 Percent May 2020 Percent Change
Apache 52,833,039 27.64% 52,211,324 27.21% -0.42
nginx 37,395,624 19.56% 39,435,834 20.55% 0.99
Google 19,179,707 10.03% 18,913,669 9.86% -0.17
Microsoft 9,123,313 4.77% 9,053,159 4.72% -0.05

For more information see Active Sites

Web server market share for top million busiest sites

Developer April 2020 Percent May 2020 Percent Change
Apache 291,222 29.12% 286,246 28.62% -0.50
nginx 255,350 25.54% 256,240 25.62% 0.09
Microsoft 77,006 7.70% 75,679 7.57% -0.13
LiteSpeed 18,901 1.89% 18,760 1.88% -0.01
Web server market share for computers

Developer April 2020 Percent May 2020 Percent Change
Apache 3,365,885 34.81% 3,411,230 34.48% -0.33
nginx 3,094,950 32.01% 3,232,171 32.67% 0.66
Microsoft 1,658,311 17.15% 1,623,616 16.41% -0.74
Web server market share for domains

Developer April 2020 Percent May 2020 Percent Change
nginx 74,124,864 28.50% 75,619,977 28.95% 0.45
Apache 72,301,338 27.80% 72,057,359 27.59% -0.21
Microsoft 47,039,629 18.09% 46,864,883 17.94% -0.14
Google 2,353,656 0.90% 2,367,143 0.91% 0.00