⚡ Programming Languages

Programming languages are sets of instructions, syntax, and rules used by developers to create software such as applications and websites.

They define how code is written and executed, and commonly provide features such as data types, variables, control structures, functions, error handling, and standard libraries.

Programming languages are often grouped by execution model: interpreted languages (JavaScript, Python, PHP), compiled languages that are translated to machine code (C/C++, Go, Rust), and hybrid languages that use just-in-time (JIT) compilation to balance portability and performance (Java, C#, Lua). Another common classification is by paradigm, for example, functional languages (Erlang, Haskell, Elixir) focus on immutable data and declarative programming.

According to our research, programming languages are detected on 82.4% of all websites.
24.2% of these sites use only one programming language, 71% use two, and 4.8% use three or more simultaneously.

We only track the programming languages used to build websites. For example, JavaScript widgets are all over the web, so we only list JavaScript where we believe it was used directly to build the backend or frontend.

⭐ Most Popular in 2026

The following chart shows the leading programming languages on the web in 2026, based on market share.

The most popular is JavaScript with an impressive share of 91.6%, followed by PHP with 68.4% and C# with 5.6%.

🚀 Country Highlights

Here is a list of languages that are especially popular in certain countries.
Differences between global and country rankings are shown in parentheses.

✨ Best Programming Languages

Below is a more detailed list of 23 programming languages we track, ranked by their market share.

RankNameMarket share
1
JavaScript
Austin, Texas, United States

An interpreted programming language and a core technology of the web, alongside HTML and CSS, used to add interactivity and logic to websites and web applications.
2
PHP

A widely used server-side scripting language for building dynamic web applications.
3
C#
Redmond, Washington, United States

A high-level, statically typed, object-oriented programming language developed for the .NET platform.
4
Lua
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A lightweight scripting language designed primarily for embedded use in applications.
5
Ruby

An interpreted, object-oriented, open-source programming language often used for web development.
6
Java
Austin, Texas, United States

A multi-platform, object-oriented programming language first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995, designed to run across different systems through the Java Virtual Machine.
7
ASP
Redmond, Washington, United States

A server-side scripting language and dynamic web page engine.

FreeLegacy
8
TypeScript
Redmond, Washington, United States

A high-level programming language developed by Microsoft that adds optional static typing and advanced language features to JavaScript for building complex applications.
9
Scala
Lausanne, Switzerland

An object-oriented programming language designed to improve and address the limitations of Java.
10
Python
Wilmington, Delaware, United States

A high-level, general-purpose programming language that is dynamically typed and widely used for scripting, automation, data analysis, and machine learning.
11
CFML
San Jose, California, United States

A scripting language for web development, usually associated with Adobe ColdFusion.
12
Go
Mountain View, California, United States

A high-level, statically typed, compiled programming language developed at Google for building efficient, scalable software and backend services.
13
Perl

A high-level, scripting, dynamically typed programming language.
14
Erlang
Stockholm, Sweden

A high-level functional programming language designed for building concurrent, distributed, and fault-tolerant systems.
15
Elixir

A dynamic, functional programming language that compiles to bytecode for the Erlang virtual machine and is designed for building scalable, fault-tolerant applications.
16
CoffeeScript

A Ruby- and Python-inspired programming language that compiles to JavaScript.
17
Dart
Mountain View, California, United States

An object-oriented, class-based, garbage-collected programming language developed by Google for building cross-platform applications from a single codebase.
18
C/C++

C and C++ are high-level, compiled programming languages known for their efficiency, portability, and close-to-hardware performance.
19
Haskell
New York, United States

A statically typed, purely functional programming language with lazy evaluation, designed for building reliable and mathematically consistent software systems.
20
Rust
Wakefield, Massachusetts, United States

A systems programming language developed at Mozilla with a focus on performance, type safety, and concurrency.
21
Hack
Menlo Park, California, United States

A PHP-based programming language designed for the HHVM virtual machine and developed by Meta to build large-scale web applications with improved type safety.
22
Swift
Cupertino, California, United States

A high-level, compiled programming language created by Apple as a modern replacement for Objective-C for building applications across iOS and macOS.
23
D
Kenmore, Washington, United States

A general-purpose programming language with static typing, systems-level access, and C-like syntax.

👉 See Also

Data is based on the analysis of 3,325,341 websites.
Statistics were last calculated on .
For details, see our methodology and disclaimer.