There are 1,489,396,284 websites on the internet as of June 2026, according to Netcraft’s monthly Web Server Survey, spread across 304,146,307 unique domains. That is the most widely cited primary count of live web servers, and it grew by 21.1 million sites in a single month. The number sounds enormous because it counts every hostname a crawler can reach, not just the sites people actually visit.
That distinction matters more than the headline figure itself. A domain registration, a working website, and an actively updated website are three different things, and most public “how many websites” claims blur them together. Below is what the primary sources actually measure, where they disagree, and why.
How many websites are there right now?
Netcraft’s June 2026 Web Server Survey received responses from 1,489,396,284 sites, hosted across 304,146,307 domains and 14,653,771 web-facing computers. This is a live crawl-based count, refreshed monthly, and it is the number most journalists and researchers cite when asked how many websites exist.
The count moves fast and unevenly. Sites grew by 21.1 million and domains by 2.0 million between May and June 2026 alone, while the number of web-facing computers grew by just 81,854. A single hosting provider migrating a large batch of parked domains can shift the site total by tens of millions in a month without any real change in the number of active websites.
Figure 1: The three numbers Netcraft reports each month, in millions. Sites (hostnames) outnumber domains because one domain can host many subdomains. Source: Netcraft, June 2026 Web Server Survey.
That scale is easier to grasp side by side with where the count stood three years earlier. In January 2023, Netcraft counted 1,132,268,801 sites across 270,967,923 domains, meaning the site count has grown by roughly 357 million in three and a half years, an increase of about 31.6%.
How many of those websites are actually active?
Most of the 1.49 billion counted sites are not active websites in any meaningful sense. Netcraft has estimated that around 75% of the hostnames it tracks are parked domains, duplicate machine-generated content, or otherwise inactive, which puts the share of genuinely active sites at roughly 25%, or about 372 million.
This gap exists because a hostname enters Netcraft’s count the moment it responds to a web request, whether or not there is a real website behind it. Domain parking pages, expired-domain placeholders, and automated content mirrors all count as “sites” the same way a small business homepage does. Registrar bulk-parking and reseller hosting inflate the raw total well beyond the number of sites a person would recognize as a website.
Figure 2: The gap between “a site Netcraft counted” and “an active website.” Source: Netcraft site-vs-active estimate methodology.
If you are building or maintaining a real website in that active 25%, the legal basics still apply regardless of how small the site is. Every live site handling user data, sign-ups, or purchases needs a terms and conditions page that matches what the site actually does, not a placeholder copied from a template years ago.
How many domain names are registered worldwide?
Domain registrations are a cleaner, if smaller, measure than Netcraft’s crawl-based site count. 392.5 million domain names were registered across all top-level domains at the end of Q1 2026, according to Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief, an increase of 5.6 million (1.4%) from Q4 2025 and 24.1 million (6.5%) year over year.
The registration base is still concentrated in a handful of legacy TLDs. .com and .net combined hold 176.1 million registrations, with .com alone at 163.6 million and .net at 12.4 million. Country-code domains (ccTLDs) account for 146.3 million registrations, growing faster in percentage terms (2.4% year over year) than the legacy generic TLDs.
Figure 3: Domain registrations by category. New gTLD figure derived from the 392.5M total minus .com, .net, and ccTLD registrations. Source: Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, Q1 2026.
Registrations are a floor, not a ceiling, on the true number of live websites. A single domain can host thousands of subdomains, which is part of why Netcraft’s site count runs nearly four times higher than Verisign’s domain count.
Is the number of websites still growing?
Yes, on every primary measure available. Netcraft’s site count has grown in most months since 2023, and Verisign’s domain registration base has grown every quarter through Q1 2026. The trend is not perfectly smooth, month-to-month swings of tens of millions of sites are common due to bulk hosting migrations, but the multi-year direction is unambiguous.
Figure 4: Netcraft’s total site count over time. Intermediate 2024 and 2025 values are approximate midpoints between that January’s survey and the next; only the January 2023, January 2026, and June 2026 figures are exact reported counts. Source: Netcraft monthly Web Server Survey archives.
This is also consistent with how small business website adoption has moved. Our small business website statistics for 2026 found that 83% of small businesses now run their own site, up from 65% in 2018, and every one of those new sites adds to both the domain registration count and the active fraction of Netcraft’s total.
What powers the average website in 2026?
WordPress powers 42.6% of all websites tracked by W3Techs as of June 2026, down slightly from a 43.6% peak in mid-2025. W3Techs’ figure is a live, continuously updated usage tracker rather than a fixed historical snapshot, so treat the exact decimal as current at time of writing rather than a permanent number.
Shopify and Wix are a distant second and third at 5.2% and 4.3% respectively, meaning WordPress alone runs more websites than the next several platforms combined.
| Platform | Share of all websites (June 2026) |
|---|---|
| WordPress | 42.6% |
| Shopify | 5.2% |
| Wix | 4.3% |
| All other platforms combined | 47.9% |
Source: W3Techs, live usage tracker, as of June 2026.
Figure: WordPress alone runs more websites than every other named platform combined. Source: W3Techs, live usage tracker, June 2026.
At the hosting layer, Cloudflare added 4.1 million sites in June 2026 alone (a 1.73% gain) and now accounts for 16.2% of all sites Netcraft sees, making it the single largest hosting and CDN presence in the site count.
The Bottom Line
The internet holds 1,489,396,284 websites by Netcraft’s June 2026 count, but that number describes hostnames a crawler can reach, not sites a person would call a real website. Strip out parked domains and duplicate content and the genuinely active total is closer to 372 million, roughly a quarter of the headline figure. Domain registrations, a cleaner floor measure, sit at 392.5 million worldwide and keep growing every quarter. Whichever number you cite, name the source and the measurement date. Publish your own terms and conditions is a two-minute task if you use a terms and conditions generator built around what your site actually collects and sells, and it matters more than which of these billion-plus sites you are.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many websites are there in the world in 2026? Netcraft’s June 2026 Web Server Survey counted 1,489,396,284 websites across 304,146,307 unique domains and 14,653,771 web-facing computers. This is the most cited primary count of live web servers, not a registry total.
How many of those websites are actually active? Roughly a quarter. Netcraft has separately estimated that around 75% of hostnames it sees are parked domains, duplicate content, or otherwise inactive, leaving an estimated 25% actively maintained with unique content.
How many domain names are registered worldwide? 392.5 million domain names were registered across all top-level domains at the end of Q1 2026, according to Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief, up 6.5% year over year.
What percentage of websites run on WordPress? 42.6% of all websites use WordPress as of June 2026, per W3Techs’ live usage tracker, down from a 43.6% peak in mid-2025.
Sources and References
- Netcraft. (2026). “June 2026 Web Server Survey.” 1,489,396,284 sites, 304,146,307 domains, 14,653,771 web-facing computers.
- Netcraft. (2023). “January 2023 Web Server Survey.” 1,132,268,801 sites, 270,967,923 domains, used as the multi-year comparison point above.
- Verisign / DNIB.com. (2026). “The Domain Name Industry Brief, Q1 2026.” 392.5 million domain registrations worldwide; .com/.net and ccTLD breakdowns.
- W3Techs. (2026). “Usage Statistics and Market Share of Content Management Systems.” Live tracker, WordPress and platform share figures as of June 2026.
- Netcraft. Web Server Survey methodology, including the active-versus-parked hostname distinction.
Note: All figures verified as of July 2026. The Netcraft and W3Techs figures come from live, continuously updated trackers and are refreshed monthly, so exact decimals will have moved by the time you read this. Headline figures on this page are refreshed at least twice a year.
