Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

This is kind of a weird statistic to try to analyze. So many uses of nginx are just the act of putting an Apache/IIS/etc site behind nginx, so technically, both servers still have market share but you only see nginx. It's just that nginx makes it so easy to do certain things, like supporting modern HTTPS, that you might as well add it to your stack rather than replace something.

Apache has historically been a giant swiss army knife that will do just about everything you could want, from redirect databases to cgi to php interpreters to crazy auth setups. It did all that while still being a reasonably good workhorse for static file serving (when properly turned and using the right worker model, event rather than threaded or process).<p>Nginx seems to have a different model. It does support a number of features but from what I can see it focuses on composing functionality with HTTP rather than adding more plugins.<p>Nginx seems to do a great job at being a load balancer and cdn-lite, and it seems like that&#x27;s what the market wants out of a web server.

Netcraft&#x27;s web server survey shows nginx at only 20%, and shows Apache dropping below 50% way back in August 2013. That&#x27;s a big difference compared to w3techs and both sources should be taken with a pinch of salt.<p>It&#x27;s the 3rd chart on: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.netcraft.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2017&#x2F;03&#x2F;24&#x2F;march-2017-web-server-survey.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.netcraft.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2017&#x2F;03&#x2F;24&#x2F;march-2017-web...</a><p>Web server market share depends a lot on which sites you&#x27;re looking at: are you checking the top X million sites or checking every site you can possibly find out about? And also how you&#x27;re deduplicating them: is every blogspot blog counted separately?<p>Disclaimer: I work at Netcraft (but not on the survey).

nginx is creating a name and market for itself as a reverse proxy, even though there are better solutions for reverse-proxies out there, everything from HAProxy to Apache Traffic Server to even Apache httpd. But this is an important market to have. Why? Because it allows for the perception that the &quot;web runs on nginx&quot; simply because all you see are the nginx web proxies and nothing behind that.<p>So what are the servers behind nginx? 9 times out of 10 it is Apache httpd, and numerous instances of it at that. So for each single nginx server &quot;seen&quot; in these surveys, there are unknown <i>multiples</i> of Apache httpd behind the scenes doing the real work.<p>But all that messes up the popular, if incorrect, narrative that Apache httpd is dying and nginx is gobbling up instances. It&#x27;s all about marketing baby, for a product that really isn&#x27;t truly &quot;open source&quot; but more so open core. And people buy it hook, line, and sinker.

A lot of Apache work load is now behind Nginx or Haproxy, I wouldn&#x27;t say those numbers are entirely truthful.<p>Consider how Plesk panels nowadays go with Nginx proxy by default, but Apache in the backend; CPanel will probably follow soon and people have already been doing this manually for a while too.<p>Apache is still there, just not in as much plain sight as it used to.

How much of nginx&#x27;s growth is, do you think, due to it being &quot;better&quot; than Apache httpd (which it isn&#x27;t, BTW. Apache 2.4 is easily as fast and scalable as nginx), compared to either (1) The aggressive sales and marketing of NGINX the company or (2) nginx fronting Apache httpd and thus &quot;hiding&quot; the growth of Apache httpd usage. But there are lots of Apache httpd haters, for some reason, and so they LOVE promoting the FUD. And yeah, I am an admitted Apache fanboy so feel free to ignore my viewpoint if it shatters your world-view :)

Can also be re-written as &quot;Apache Still the dominant web platform for the internet despite the upstarts..&quot;<p>I Don&#x27;t consciously know either server, I just like the way sites can spin facts differently.

Or: 83.3% of web servers are Open Source. How does that sound? :-)

I saw a recent version of cPanel that used ngnix as a proxy in front of Apache, with Apache on a high port. That might be responsible for a lot of the new ngnix seen out there.

IIS will probably continue its nose dive as Microsoft pushes forward with .NET Core. I&#x27;m guessing people using .NET Core are more likely to use Kestrel + Nginx as a proxy.

Nginx is the web server equivalent of programming languages with fibers (in a good way.)<p>Is there anything that competes&#x2F;a &quot;next Nginx&quot;?

Huh, I&#x27;m surprised Apache is still so high? Are there huge hosting sites that use it or something? Wordpress?<p>I (and I know no one) who has reached for Apache over NGINX in a decade.

Come for the performance promises, stay for the configuration.

&quot;Just to put that growth rate in perspective: this is 70 times the number of sites that switch to Node.js, another fast-growing web server.&quot;<p>I find it hard to believe this could be accurate considering the vast majority of Node.js deployments are also utilizing Nginx as a reverse-proxy in front of it. I think a large portion of nginx&#x27;s uptake is actually due to Node.js&#x27; popularity.

So I reckon Docker &amp; PHP7&#x2F;HHVM have contributed for sure. So much easier deploying Nginx - not to mention just plain nicer.

Another measurement put Google at 13% in 2010. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;29&#x2F;google_web_server&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;29&#x2F;google_web_server&#x2F;</a><p>Also, by amount of traffic it&#x27;s another story (YouTube).

I am really surprised no one brought on the performance topic. Now I have been out of web programming for half a decade or more, but if my memory is not completely gone I remember that nginx was about an order of magnitude faster than apache under heavy load. Is it still the same nowadays?

I run apache locally for development and nginx on my servers. I much prefer setting up nginx.

Looks like Nginx has the highest usage in Russia. Why is that?

This is like (or worst) than comparing orange and apples. Nginx and Apache are completely different.

Calling it. Nginx won because it&#x27;s configs are not xml. Apache should have learned by now.