For more than a decade, developers have been declaring PHP “dead” with great confidence. And yet, here we are in 2026, with PHP still powering roughly three quarters of the web. If PHP really died, the internet would be a smoking crater by now. Instead, everything seems to be working just fine.
The main reason PHP refuses to disappear is WordPress. Like it or not, WordPress runs over 40% of all websites on the planet. Blogs, business sites, news portals, and personal pages all depend on PHP. Every plugin, theme, and custom feature keeps PHP firmly in place. Add platforms like Wikipedia and Etsy to the mix, and the “dead” label starts to sound a little dramatic.
Another old complaint is speed. Yes, PHP used to be slow. That argument made sense in 2012. Modern PHP, especially versions 7 and 8, is a different story. With serious performance improvements and a JIT compiler, PHP is fast enough for most real world applications. It also tends to use less memory than many alternatives, which means cheaper servers and fewer headaches. Businesses care about that, even if it’s not exciting.
Then there’s Laravel. Laravel took PHP from “that old web language” and turned it into something clean, modern, and enjoyable to work with. It offers great documentation, strong structure, and powerful tools right out of the box. For many developers, Laravel erased years of bad PHP memories and replaced them with something surprisingly pleasant.
PHP also wins where it matters most for many projects: cost and simplicity. Almost every hosting provider supports PHP by default. You don’t need complex setups or expensive infrastructure to launch a PHP site. For small and medium businesses, this ease of deployment often matters more than using the newest, trendiest stack.
The “PHP is dead” meme survives mostly because PHP is boring now and boring is good. It’s stable, reliable, and everywhere. It’s not the shiny new toy, but it’s the tool that quietly keeps the internet running. As long as people want fast results, low costs, and proven technology, PHP will continue doing what it has always done working, while everyone else argues about it.
