5.2 Million Developers and 40K Stars on php-src
PHP has a global developer population of 5.2 million. The language interpreter itself, php-src, has 39,988 GitHub stars, over 1,000 contributors, and more than 130,000 commits.
These numbers represent more than popularity — they represent momentum. Major companies run their businesses on PHP: Wikipedia (MediaWiki), Etsy, Tumblr, Dailymotion, Flickr, Vimeo, Mailchimp, Baidu, and of course every WordPress and WooCommerce site. Facebook loved PHP so much they created their own variant (Hack) and a custom runtime (HHVM) to make it faster.
| Company | PHP Usage |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | MediaWiki — top 10 most-visited site globally |
| Meta / Facebook | Founded on PHP, created Hack and HHVM |
| Etsy | Core backend, one of the largest PHP deployments |
| Slack | Original backend built with PHP |
| Tumblr | PHP backend powering billions of posts |
| Vimeo | PHP backend — also created Psalm |
| Mailchimp | PHP backend serving millions of email campaigns |
| Flickr | PHP since its earliest days at Yahoo |
| Dailymotion | PHP-powered video platform |
| Magento / Adobe Commerce | PHP e-commerce powering enterprise retail |
Source: GitHub · ZenRows PHP Usage Statistics, 2026
And development isn't slowing down. PHP 8.6 is already open for backward-incompatible changes on the php-src master branch. The RFC process continues with community-driven proposals, transparent voting, and rigorous debate. 200+ RFCs have been implemented since the process was formalized.