DEV Community

Cover image for Why PHP Still Powers the Internet in 2025
xdev
xdev

Posted on

Why PHP Still Powers the Internet in 2025

“PHP is dead.”

You’ve probably heard that before. But here’s the thing — PHP never died. It just kept doing its job quietly while everyone else moved on to the Next Big Thing™.

In 2025, PHP still powers over 75% of the web. That includes WordPress (which alone runs ~40% of all websites), Wikipedia, and even parts of Facebook. So yeah… it’s kind of a big deal.


Modern PHP is legit

If the last time you used PHP was during the 5.x days, it’s changed. A lot. PHP 8.x introduced:

  • Strong typing and union types
  • Match expressions and arrow functions
  • Attributes (a cleaner way to do annotations)
  • JIT compilation for faster performance

It’s cleaner, more consistent, and way more enjoyable to write.


Laravel is a game changer

laravel meme

PHP’s bad rep? Laravel erased a lot of that.

Laravel is a modern, batteries-included web framework with elegant syntax, a vibrant ecosystem, and built-in features like:

  • Auth, queues, caching, file storage
  • Blade templates, Livewire, Inertia.js
  • Artisan CLI and Laravel Forge/Vapor for deployment

It’s honestly one of the most polished developer experiences around.


PHP is practical (and everywhere)

  • Easy to deploy
  • Cheap hosting
  • Tons of jobs and tutorials
  • Massive community support
  • Integrates with everything: MySQL, Redis, Stripe, S3, you name it

Whether you’re building a side project, a SaaS, or an enterprise platform — PHP still gets the job done.


Final thoughts

Tech doesn’t die. It just stops solving the problems we have *right now.*

PHP still solves a lot of them — quickly, affordably, and at scale. It’s not the loudest language in the room, but it’s one of the most dependable.

So no, PHP isn’t dead. It’s just quietly powering most of the internet — like it always has.


Still building with PHP? Coming back to it after years away? Drop a comment — would love to hear your thoughts.

Top comments (0)