Common Web Server software comparison report

Stats about the most used HTTP Server software

What is the most widely used Web Server software?

Short answer: the most common http server is Apache with a 35% share.

Long answer: due to the nature of the Internet, you can't have reliable statistics on ALL web servers laying around.
All the stats you can find only take into consideration a small sample of public web servers. This service, however, tries to gather the most realistic snapshot of the current http webservers distribution by randomly probing active hosts and monitoring the server software.

List of most common Web Servers

  1. Apache 35%
  2. RomPager 16%
  3. Microsoft-IIS 14%
  4. AkamaiGHost 5.3%
  5. micro_httpd 4.5%
  6. GoAhead-Webs 2%
  7. nginx 1.4%
  8. cisco-IOS 1.3%
  9. Boa 1%
  10. lighttpd 0.93%
  11. httpd 0.86%
  12. mini_httpd 0.82%
  13. Allegro-Software-RomPager 0.77%
  14. Apache-Coyote 0.71%
  15. Microsoft-HTTPAPI 0.64%
  16. Virata-EmWeb 0.59%
  17. Nucleus 0.49%
  18. WindWeb 0.45%
  19. Rapidsite 0.44%
  20. SonicWALL 0.43%
  21. others 12.37%

Other HTTP protocol info gathered from Web Servers

While scanning Web Servers for software version information, the system also collects a range of other interesting data about the servers included in the HTTP protocol transaction.
Most web servers provide some header fields which give the HTTP clients info or direction on what to do with the data being sent. Other fields may be informational only. Some of them bind the client to a strict policy.

You can browse a list of common http response headers found in the wild. This list includes both standard headers and server-specific headers which not all HTTP clients understands:

Common headers: