2025 Global PHP Ecosystem Development Status and Trend Report

R E P O R T 2025 PHPLandscape Report An in-depth examination of ongoing trends andevolutions in the PHP ecosystem. Contents 3........Foreword 18......PHP Security and Compliance Trends 18Security Trends20Tactical Security Trends22Compliance Requirements and Trends 4........About the Survey 4Respondent Firmographics5Development Team Size 25......PHP Version Adoption and Migration Trends 25PHP Version Adoption28PHP Upgrade and Migration Trends29Migration Trends by PHP Version31Forecasting 2025 PHP Upgrade and Migration Trends 8........PHP Application Development Trends 8PHP Application Types9PHP Application Integration Trends10Operating System Usage Trends11Deployment Trends12Web Server Trends13Container Trends14Community Container Usage 33Top Development Priorities34Feature Development vs. Maintenance and Administration Foreword This year, 2025, PHP celebrates it’s 30th year. This is a tremendous landmark for the language. At the time that PHP first emerged, the web was still in its infancy,and many languages and commercial technologies were vying for the position of most-favored language for webapplications. While many of these have disappeared or shifted to specialize in other contexts, PHP has largely retained The PHP ecosystem is continuously evolving. Around 15 years ago, PHP developers identified that a predictable releaseand support schedule leads to less uncertainty for users. We’ve seen this result in fewer organizations relying on end of life(EOL) versions, ensuring that PHP applications can access the latest features and performance improvements. That said, Matthew Weier O’PhinneySenior Product ManagerPerforce Zend and OpenLogic Considering PHP’s maturity and consistently growing list of features, PHP developers have the world at their fingertips.They can integrate with just about any database on the planet, make both simple and sophisticated web service requests, and integrate with every emergingtechnology – whether it’s key-value storage, search engines like Elastic, or real-time message brokers like Kafka. With that maturity, we’re also seeing fewer newdevelopers in the language and a larger pool of seasoned developers. This is a double-edged sword as we have experienced talent, but the fact that the pool isn’t With more sophisticated PHP applications also come new needs. Because of the critical nature of many PHP applications, security of the application and the entirestack becomes important to prevent data and privacy breaches. With many businesses operating at a global scale, performance at the edges and over prolongedhours is critical to ensure availability – after all, an application is only as good as it is available, and understanding the health of your application is more important than As always, I find our PHP Landscape Report data incredibly useful in understanding the health and needs of the PHP ecosystem. I’m thrilled that 30 years in, it is as vibrant as ever! Sincerely, Matthew Weier O’PhinneySenior Product Manager | Perforce Zend and OpenLogic About the Survey The Perforce 2025 PHP Landscape Report is based on the results of an anonymous survey of self-identified PHP users and administrators. It was conducted between Respondent Firmographics The survey’s first question asked respondents to disclose their job title. As we have seen in previous years, the majority of participants were in developer roles,representing almost 75% of our surveyed population. Manager/Director roles came in second at 9.27%, and C-Suite roles represented 4.99%. All other roles In a new question this year, we asked respondents to share how long they have been using PHP. Approximately 90% answered that they have been using PHPfor 5 years or more, with 57.75% stating that they have been using PHP for over 15 years. Development Team Size Next, we asked about the size of participant development teams. Over 75%of respondents reported development teams with 9 members or less, with 3-9members being the most common size at 46.52%. This follows with our survey Company Size The next question in the survey asked participants to share their company size.As with previous years, the responses were distributed fairly evenly, with themost common answer being startups at 27.45%, followed by small companies Most of our surveyed PHP developerteams have 9 or fewer members andtend to work for companies with fewer Annual IT Budget for Infrastructure Management In a new question for the 2025 survey, we asked participants about their annualbudget for infrastructure management. 37.21% were not sure or preferred notto answer, which followed with the large number of developers represented inthe survey. However, 35.60% of participants had an annual budget of less than Out of all reported budgets, over halfof surveyed PHP developer teams hadan annual IT budget of $50,000 or less. Region We then moved on to asking participants to identify where their globalheadquarters were located. Over half were