Updated

Technology · Content

WordPress

wordpress.org
Open sourceFree planSubscription

WordPress is free, open-source software for building websites. Beginners can use it as it comes; developers can change almost anything.[1]

WordPress is a versatile, open-source content management system that powers millions of websites. It offers a user-friendly interface, extensive customization options through themes and plugins, and supports various content types, making it suitable for blogs, e-commerce sites, and complex web applications.

WordPress belongs toBlogsContent Management System (CMS)categories.

First released

2,003[1]

License

GPLv2 or later: free and open source[1]

Runs on

PHP and a MariaDB or MySQL database[1]

Extended by

Plugins and themes[2]

463websites

use it — 18.1% of the 2,555 websites we scanned in the last 12 months

#1of 49

tools in its category seen in our scans (we recognize 526)

213public pages

on UptimeCard — open any of them to see how that site is doing

In short: the software costs nothing, but a WordPress site costs what its hosting and plugins cost, and that setup decides how fast the site is.[1][3]

18.85% of all websites we track run WordPress▲ 0.06 points since 20 Sep

Should you use WordPress?

The 10-second version, from the vendor’s own pages and what we see in our scans

WordPress fits if…

  • You want to own the site and choose where it is hosted[1]The license lets you run it for any purpose.
  • You want ready-made plugins instead of custom code[2]Thousands of plugins exist outside the core software.
  • Beginners and developers have to work in the same tool[1]

Look elsewhere if…

  • You do not want to manage hosting and updates yourself[4]Squarespace includes fully-managed hosting in every plan.
  • You want a visual designer and hosting in one monthly price[5]Webflow sells that as plans, with a free starter plan.
  • You need a very light page and little upkeepIn our scans, the heavier a WordPress page is, the later it shows content; see the speed section.
Watch the renewal price. A hosting plan recommended on WordPress.org advertises $2.49 a month for 48 months, then renews at $10.99 a month, 4.4× the headline price.[3]

WordPress next to its closest alternatives

Other ways to run a content website. Prices come from each vendor's page; website counts and speed are ours.

WordPressWebflowSquarespace
How you get it
What it isFree softwarelicensed under the GPL[1]Hosted buildersold as monthly plans[5]Hosted buildersold as monthly plans[4]
Free optionThe softwarehosting is separate[1]Starter planfree, limited[5]14-day trialfree[4]
HostingYou choosefrom $2.49 a month on a promotion[3]Not stated on its pricing pageIncludedfully-managed cloud hosting[4]
Cheapest paid way$2.49/mohosting promotion; renews at $10.99[3]$15/mobilled yearly, no CMS; $25 with CMS[5]from $19/molowest of the two Basic prices listed[4]
What we see in our scans
Websites running it46318.1% of 2,555 scanned sites963.8% of 2,555 scanned sites50.2% of 2,555 scanned sites
Typical page load time4.4 s✓197 public sites5.2 s58 public sites—
Typical page weight3.4 MB✓typical home page4.0 MBtypical home page—
Security grade B or better36%✓20 of 55 graded sites score B or better19%3 of 16 graded sites score B or better—

Scan rows count public pages only; a tool needs at least 5 measured sites to appear. A check mark marks the best value in a row, even when the gap is small.

  • Webflow: A hosted visual builder sold as plans, with a free starter plan[5]
  • Squarespace: A hosted website builder with hosting included in every plan[4]

Choose WordPress if…

  • You want to own the site and pick your host[1]
  • You want a plugin for almost every need[2]

Choose Webflow if…

  • You want a visual designer and a free place to start[5]
  • Your site is simple and does not need a CMS[5]

Choose Squarespace if…

  • You want hosting handled and one flat plan[4]

Support and help for WordPress

How the vendor says you can reach it, and the public help community

Forums

Community support forums where users help each other[11]

Stack Overflow

189,983 questions[12][13]

56% have an upvoted answer. [wordpress] questions

What it really costs to run

WordPress itself is free. These are the three things you pay for.

The software: free

Open source under the GPL, so there is no license fee and no per-site charge.[1]

Hosting: from a month

Entry price of a host WordPress.org recommends. It rises to $10.99 a month after the 48-month deal.[3]

Plugins: free to paid

Most sites start with free plugins. Paid extras add up: WooCommerce, for example, sells extensions at $29 to $299 a year each.[6]

Hosting plans: the headline price and the price after

PlanHeadline priceRenews atRenewal vs headlineCost over five yearsIncludes
Premiumcreators and small brands$2.49/mo$10.99/mo4.4×$251$4.19 a month3 websites · 20 GB
Mid planunlimited websites and priority support$3.49/mo$16.99/mo4.9×$371$6.19 a monthUnlimited websites · 50 GB
Cloud Startupagencies and high-traffic projects$7.99/mo$25.99/mo3.3×$695$11.59 a monthUnlimited websites · 100 GB

One host, as listed on its own page. Five-year cost is the 48-month price plus one more year at the renewal price. Other hosts differ; this shows the pattern to look for.[3]

WordPress versions

The newest release, the series that still gets fixes, and what changed

Latest release

7.1.3[8][9]

Released 6 Oct 2026

Maintained series

7.1

Only the newest release of the 7.1 series still gets fixes[9]

What changed in 7.1

  • Version 7.1 added responsive styling controls and a redesigned media editor[10]
  • It also brought richer Notes with mentions and inline feedback, and better image processing[10]

What WordPress sites add on top

How many of the 463 WordPress sites we scanned also run each tool, grouped by what the tool does

Tag manager

Google Tag Manager
70%324 sites

Analytics

Google Analytics
70%322 sites
Linkedin Insight Tag
22%100 sites
Facebook Pixel
18%83 sites

Search visibility

Yoast SEO
50%230 sites
Yoast SEO Premium
16%73 sites
RankMath SEO
13%61 sites

Page builder

Elementor
25%116 sites

Speed and caching

WP Rocket
18%81 sites

Forms

Contact Form 7
15%70 sites

Marketing

HubSpot
15%69 sites

The full bar means every WordPress site. A site can run several tools for one job, so the shares of tools in one group can add up to more than 100%.

How WordPress sites protect themselves

Share of the 463 sites we scanned that run each protection

HSTS53% · 247 sites

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) informs browsers that the site should only be accessed using HTTPS

reCAPTCHA27% · 127 sites

reCAPTCHA is a free service from Google that helps protect websites from spam and abuse

Cloudflare Bot Management12% · 54 sites

Cloudflare bot management solution identifies and mitigates automated traffic to protect websites from bad bots

Protections add up, they do not replace each other: a site can run all of them.

What sites use WordPress for

An estimate from UptimeCard's technology map of 179 public sites

Runs the marketing site83 sites

2600hz.com · acumatica.com · adeptcloud.net

Publishes a blog or resources55 sites

accredible.com · adereso.ai · advapacs.com

Runs the whole site33 sites

abeta.co.uk · bcit.ca · campaignregistry.com

Hosts help, docs or support content7 sites

articulatestatus.com · docker.com · mend.io

Rough guide, not a measurement: each description is written automatically from the site’s technology stack and the site has not confirmed it. A site is counted once, in the first group its description fits (shop, help and docs, blog, marketing site; otherwise the whole site). Descriptions that only guess (“likely”, “may”) are left out.

The speed trap: what fast WordPress sites do differently

197 public WordPress sites we measured, split by how fast their page loads

Fastest quarter

2.6 stypical page load time

2.7 MB page · 101 requests

Slowest quarter

7.7 stypical page load time

4.8 MB page · 160 requests

What differs between the two groups

Extras on the site
Varnish6%24%
Fastly6%22%
Google Font API10%27%
OneTrust12%29%
Swiper8%24%
Max Mega Menu6%20%
Read this as a pattern, not a cause. The sites in the slower group more often add the extras above. WordPress itself is not what separates the two groups.

At a glance

UptimeCard's own scans and tests of 2,555 websites · refreshed weekly

How WordPress sites scoreout of 100 · hover or tap a score for details

50PerformanceLowaverage site: 5088AccessibilityGoodaverage site: 8992Best practicesGoodaverage site: 9392SEOGoodaverage site: 92

Page load time

Loads about as fast as the average site

WordPress sites
4.4 s
All sites
4.3 s

Most WordPress sites load in 3.3–6.3 s. Home page weight: 3.4 MB vs 3.3 MB for all sites. 197 public sites measured.

Where are they hosted?

Mostly Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services

  • Cloudflare22%
  • Amazon Web Services20%
  • Fastly10%
  • Google Cloud5%
  • Other44%
United States 44%Canada 27%Germany 6%

Who uses it?

Educational Resources sites use WordPress 1.6× more than average

Technology and Software59%
Business Services1.4× avg16%
Educational Resources1.6× avg8%
Software as a Service (SaaS)3%

Share of 213 classified public sites. “× average” compares with all 961 public sites.

Browser-security check

36% of graded sites pass

20of 55 score B or better

Rates each site’s own security settings, not WordPress. 55 public sites graded so far.

How WordPress sites are built

Closest partners. The number says how many times more often the tool runs on WordPress sites than on an average website. Hover a partner for its share of sites.

Yoast SEO6×Elementor6×WP Rocket6×Yoast SEO Premium6×Contact Form 76×Site Kit6×RankMath SEO6×Twitter Emoji (Twemoji)5×jQuery UI3×

Stacks we see most. Tools that tend to run together with WordPress on the same websites. The percentage is the share of all 463 WordPress sites that run the whole stack.

10 stacks · swipe, drag or use the arrows
#1

WordPress + Yoast SEO + Varnish + Fastly

5.2%24 of 463 sites
#2

WordPress + Yoast SEO + WordPress Block Editor

5.8%27 of 463 sites
#3

WordPress + Yoast SEO + WPML

5.6%26 of 463 sites
#4

WordPress + Yoast SEO + Elementor + Hello Elementor

3.9%18 of 463 sites
#5

WordPress + Elementor + Contact Form 7 + Site Kit

3.2%15 of 463 sites
#6

WordPress + WP Rocket + RankMath SEO

3.5%16 of 463 sites
#7

WordPress + WordPress Block Editor + Max Mega Menu

2.6%12 of 463 sites
#8

WordPress + Elementor + HubSpot WordPress plugin

2.6%12 of 463 sites
#9

WordPress + Elementor + WooCommerce

2.6%12 of 463 sites
#10

WordPress + cdnjs + jQuery CDN

2.2%10 of 463 sites

Similar tools in its category

Blogs: 526 tools known, 49 seen in our scans

Adobe Experience Manager104 sitesAlternativeContentful89 sitesAlternativeDrupal70 sitesAlternativeHubSpot CMS Hub54 sitesAlternativeSanity28 sitesAlternativeCraft CMS20 sitesAlternativeSanity.io19 sitesAlternativeSitecore17 sitesAlternative

How websites combine WordPress with other tools

Relationships found on the websites that use it, from the same map status pages show.

Needs another tool 387Built on a platform 218Integrates with another 212Complements another tool 79Overlaps with another 10

Websites using WordPress

463 websites use WordPress: 18.1% of the 2,555 websites we scanned in the last 12 months. A selection is shown below.

Scores are out of 100: P Performance · A Accessibility · B Best practices · S SEO. Green 80+, yellow 65–79, orange 50–64, red below 50. The dot shows whether our last scan found the site failing (red) or not (green); Red, amber or blue: an active incident on the site's status page (outage, degraded, maintenance) or a failing scan; amber also means a certificate ending within 30 days. Hover the dot for details.

Who is behind WordPress

From its own pages and public records, with sources

Trademark held by

WordPress Foundation[9]

WordPress since 2003[14]

Its story

  1. 2003

    Began in 2003 as a fork of the b2/cafelog blogging software[1]

  2. 2004

    WordPress 1.0 became available in January 2004. The blogging software added Atom syndication and auto-discovery.[15]

  3. 2010

    WordPress 3.0 merged the separate MU project into WordPress and created multisite. One installation could now run a whole network of sites.[16]

  4. 2014

    WordPress 4.0 made plugins easier to find. The plugin directory gained new metrics, improved search and a more visual browsing experience.[17]

  5. 2018

    WordPress 5.0 introduced the block-based editor. Content moved into blocks, the first step toward editing the whole site in one way.[18]

  6. 2022

    WordPress 5.9 shipped the first default block theme and the Site Editor. Themes could now be styled with blocks, from colors and fonts to page templates.[19]

  7. 2026

    WordPress 7.1 added responsive styling controls and a redesigned media editor. It also brought richer Notes with mentions and inline feedback.[9][10]

Questions about WordPress

Is WordPress really free?
The software is. It is licensed under the General Public License (GPLv2 or later), which lets you run it for any purpose. Hosting, a domain and any paid plugins are separate costs.[1]
What is WordPress built on?
PHP and a MariaDB database; MySQL also works.[1]
Can I add features without writing code?
Yes. For every feature that is not in WordPress core there is a plugin directory with thousands of plugins.[2]
Do I need technical skills?
People with limited tech experience can use it out of the box, and more technical people can customize it extensively.[1]
Where can I host a WordPress site?
There are hundreds of thousands of web hosts, and the vast majority meet WordPress's minimum requirements. WordPress.org also lists a few it recommends.[7]
How many websites use WordPress?
We found WordPress on 463 of the 2,555 websites we scanned in the last 12 months (18.1%). 213 of them have a public status page.
What is WordPress often used with?
Among the websites we scan, WordPress is often found alongside Google Analytics (69.5% of its sites), Yoast SEO (49.7% of its sites), Nginx (30% of its sites).
What are the alternatives to WordPress?
Other content management systems we recognize include Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful, Drupal, HubSpot CMS Hub.

Is your website built with WordPress?

UptimeCard checks it around the clock, tells you the minute it stops answering, and gives your visitors a status page.

Monitor my site freeCreate a status page