Is PHP dead?

PHP is thirty years old and has spent the last decade quietly getting good while everyone was busy watching JavaScript reinvent the server, then the build step, then the server again.

Versions 7 and 8 made it several times faster and gave it a real type system: scalar and union types, enums, readonly properties, property hooks, a JIT compiler. The tooling caught up too. Composer handles dependencies without a 400 MB folder, PHPStan and Psalm do static analysis, and Symfony and Laravel are as mature as any web framework in any language. I have watched three generations of "PHP killers" come and go from the same chair. The chair is leather. It was expensive.

The "PHP is dead" thing usually rests on developer surveys, where PHP's share drifts down a point or two a year as newcomers pick Python or TypeScript. That is a real trend. It is also completely compatible with PHP running most of the web for the foreseeable future, because languages do not die while billions of pages depend on them and a funded team keeps improving them. They just stop being fashionable, which, at my income level, is not a problem I notice.

So: not dead, not dying, not the right tool for everything, and paying better than ever. Which is a normal thing for a programming language to be, and an excellent thing for a programming language to be if you happen to be good at it.

Languages do not die while billions of pages depend on them. They just stop being fashionable, which, at my income level, is not a problem I notice.

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Is PHP still relevant in 2026?Share answer

Relevant? Kid, W3Techs says PHP runs 69.9% of every website whose back end they can identify. As of this month. That is not "relevant", that is the entire web with a few decorative exceptions. Yes, the share has slipped a couple of points over ten years, because somebody figured out how to serve a blog as a static file. Congratulations to them.

Here is the honest part, because I am rich enough to be honest: PHP is a first-choice tool for content sites, e-commerce, SaaS back ends, APIs and everything that touches WordPress, Laravel or Symfony. It was never the tool for machine learning, kernels or mobile apps, and it still is not. I do not use a Lamborghini to plough a field either.

Is PHP still being actively maintained?Share answer

A new minor version ships every year at the end of November like clockwork. PHP 8.5 landed on 20 November 2025 and gets security fixes until the end of 2029. Four branches are supported right now: 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 and 8.5. Your favourite JavaScript framework has been rewritten from scratch twice in that time and renamed once.

Since 2021 the PHP Foundation has paid a team of core developers full time. JetBrains, Automattic, Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency and Alpha-Omega write the cheques. Almost 3,000 commits from foundation developers in 2025 alone. That is not a language on life support. That is a language with a personal trainer.

What is new in recent PHP versions?Share answer

PHP 8.5 gave us the pipe operator, a proper URI extension, array_first() and array_last(), clone with, closures in constant expressions, #[NoDiscard] and backtraces on fatal errors. PHP 8.4 brought property hooks, asymmetric visibility, a new DOM API and lazy objects. Versions 8.0 through 8.3 delivered the JIT, enums, readonly properties, fibers, named arguments, match, attributes and typed class constants.

If your mental model of PHP is version 5 and a mysql_query() call in the middle of the HTML, I have news. The language you would meet today is strictly typed, fast and, frankly, better dressed than you.

Which major companies still use PHP?Share answer

Wikipedia. The whole thing. MediaWiki is PHP. WordPress.com, Tumblr and WooCommerce are PHP products from Automattic. Etsy, Mailchimp and Vimeo have been PHP shops for a long time. Slack and Facebook run Hack, which is PHP that went to private school. Still looks like PHP, still smells like PHP.

Then there is the long tail: roughly 41% of every website on Earth is WordPress, per W3Techs. Every single one of those is a PHP site. Every single one of those paid for somebody's lambo. Several of them paid for mine.

Is PHP losing popularity among developers?Share answer

Among developers who fill in surveys, sure, a point or two a year. The Stack Overflow Developer Survey shows PHP drifting down while Python and TypeScript go up. You know who fills in surveys? Students and people looking for a job. You know who does not? People billing at a rate that makes surveys a bad use of the afternoon.

The signal that matters is the ecosystem. Packagist serves billions of package installs a year. Laravel 13 and Symfony 8 both shipped in the last twelve months. PHP conferences sell out. The people writing the "PHP is dead" posts are mostly writing them on WordPress.

Is PHP slow?Share answer

That was 2014. PHP 7 roughly doubled throughput over PHP 5. PHP 8 added a JIT compiler. Every release since has shaved more off. The typical web request spends its life waiting on a database anyway, and PHP is not the one holding it up. Your 400 npm dependencies might be.

Need long-running processes or thousands of concurrent connections? FrankenPHP, Swoole and RoadRunner keep the application in memory and handle requests asynchronously. No rewrite. No Medium post about the rewrite. Just faster.

Is PHP insecure?Share answer

PHP earned that reputation in the 2000s, with register_globals and SQL glued together with string concatenation. I was there. I wrote some of it. It was a different time and we were all very young. Modern PHP removed those footguns years ago. Prepared statements, escaping by default in Twig and Blade, CSRF tokens and password_hash() are the path of least resistance in every current framework.

What is still true: an unmaintained WordPress install with twenty abandoned plugins is a risk. That is an operations problem, not a language problem, and it is usually the client's nephew's fault.

Can PHP handle large-scale projects?Share answer

Wikipedia serves billions of page views a month on PHP. Etsy and WordPress.com are not exactly side projects either. Symfony and Laravel give you dependency injection, queues, structure and a testing story that large codebases need. PHPStan and Psalm catch whole classes of bugs before deploy. I have shipped codebases with more lines than your city has people. They are still running. So am I.

Is PHP good for modern web development?Share answer

Laravel 13 shipped in March 2026. Symfony 8.0 shipped in November 2025. Both pair fine with React, Vue or htmx on the front end, and Livewire, Inertia and Symfony UX let you build an interactive interface without a second application, a second build pipeline and a second team to argue with.

Deployment is the part nobody talks about at the JavaScript meetups. A PHP app runs on almost any host on Earth, and FrankenPHP bundles the app, the web server and HTTPS into one binary. I deploy while the tokens on your build server are still warming up.

Is it easy to hire PHP developers?Share answer

Easier than for almost any language. Thirty years of practitioners, an enormous agency and freelance market, and a Laravel community that will not shut up, in the best way. The catch is variance: the barrier to entry is low, so hiring for modern PHP means checking for typed code, tests and framework fluency, not just the three letters on a CV. The good ones are expensive. I know, because I am one, and I set the price.

Can I use PHP for mobile apps?Share answer

Not the app itself. PHP is a server-side language and it knows it. It is an excellent fit for the API the app talks to, which is where most mobile products burn their engineering hours anyway. Laravel and API Platform on Symfony are the usual picks. The app can be in whatever the kids are using this quarter.

What are the alternatives to PHP?Share answer

Node.js and TypeScript if your team already lives in JavaScript and enjoys it. Python with Django or FastAPI if machine learning is nearby. Go if raw throughput matters more than shipping this week. Ruby on Rails if you like Rails, and some people genuinely do.

Every one of those is a fine choice. Not one of them is a reason to rewrite a working PHP application. Pick the stack your team can actually ship and maintain, and be deeply suspicious of anyone telling you a language is dead while 70% of the web runs on it. They are selling something. It is usually a course.

Will sticking with PHP hold my career back?Share answer

Twenty-plus years in, and the only thing PHP has held back is my garage door, because it is full. Modern PHP teaches the same things every backend job needs: typed code, dependency injection, testing, queues, caching, security. Those transfer everywhere. Learn one framework properly, keep a second language around for perspective, and ignore the annual "PHP is dead" post. This site has been answering that question since 2022. The answer has not changed and neither has my invoice.

Every time somebody posts "PHP is dead" you lose four minutes typing the same reply. I have automated it. Copy, paste, get on with your day.

PHP is dead? W3Techs has it on 69.9% of every server-side website they can identify, as of September 2026. PHP 8.5 shipped in November 2025 and is patched until 2029. The PHP Foundation pays a full-time core team. Your framework has been renamed twice since PHP 8 came out. https://phpdead.com

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