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What is the most common web server?
October 2026 census edition
As of October 12, 2026, the most common Server header on the web is "cloudflare" at 21.33% of the 220.4 million domain records in the census's HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) pass that disclose one, ahead of "nginx" at 17.61% and "apache" at 16.10%, in the Defaults.Exposed census.
Share of the domain records in the census's HTTP pass that disclose a Server header (server values grouped by product, version stripped; about 1.1% re-scan duplicates). /research/server-and-x-powered-by-headers ranks values from a different extraction, per-TLD top 40 over the domains that sent a Server, CSP (Content Security Policy) or X-Powered-By header, so its counts differ from these. CDN (Content Delivery Network) front-ends (for example "cloudflare") mask the origin server behind them.
Most common web server: how it is measured
It comes from the HTTP response pass, which records the headers every reachable host actually returns, including whatever it volunteers about its own software. Every domain in the census is measured directly and counted once.
Server header values are self-reported and can be changed or suppressed, so this ranks what the web says it runs rather than what it provably runs. That caveat does not undermine the figure: the same self-reporting is what an attacker enumerates from, so the reported distribution is the one that matters operationally.
The figure is a name rather than a number: whichever entry holds the largest share of the population being measured, with that share stated beside it.
It moves when hosting platforms change their defaults, and when operators decide whether to advertise their software to every visitor. A version string in a response header is free reconnaissance for anyone hunting unpatched hosts. The number is recomputed from the raw evidence at every edition. What it cannot tell you is where one particular domain stands: for that, see what the headers reveal.
the full grading methodology · the underlying dataset, published open with the counts behind every percentage. If a figure here disagrees with one elsewhere on the site, the dataset is canonical and we would like to know.
| Server header | Responses | Share of disclosed |
|---|---|---|
| cloudflare | 47,008,596 | 21.33% |
| nginx | 38,826,005 | 17.61% |
| apache | 35,478,988 | 16.10% |
| openresty | 11,851,795 | 5.38% |
| litespeed | 10,372,212 | 4.71% |
| squarespace | 9,473,865 | 4.30% |
| pepyaka | 7,606,530 | 3.45% |
| hcdn | 6,981,916 | 3.17% |
| namecheap-nginx | 5,360,508 | 2.43% |
| vercel | 4,782,237 | 2.17% |
| caddy | 2,608,465 | 1.18% |
| kestrel | 2,188,130 | 0.99% |
Most common web server: how to cite it
Please cite Defaults.Exposed and link this page. The citation below carries the date.
Defaults.Exposed, "What is the most common web server?" (as of October 12, 2026). https://defaults.exposed/stats/what-is-the-most-common-web-server
Permalink: https://defaults.exposed/stats/what-is-the-most-common-web-server · Machine-readable: /stats/s/top-web-server.json · Licence: open data
Methodology: how we grade the internet · Source data: census data and downloads. Updated with each census edition.