PHP Versions Used in Commercial Projects in 2017

PHP has been one of the top 10 most used languages for years, and it’s present on the server-side for the majority of websites accessible today. In this post, we’ll share with you our annual analysis of PHP versions used in commercial projects on Semaphore’s hosted Continuous Integration service.

The majority of projects are using version 5.6, whose active support period ended on 19th January 2017. This version will continue to get security updates until the end of 2018. Versions 5,3, 5.4, and 5.5, which are no longer supported, are used in 34% of projects. This may be due to the fact that the process of updating from 5.x to 7.x is complex. For example, many fatal errors have been converted to exceptions, there are many changes to variable and integer handling, etc.

Version 7.0 is used in 19% of all PHP projects. This version was released in December 2015, and its active support period ends in 1 month. Version 7.1 was released in December last year. So far, only 9% of projects are using it.

You can take a look at the official supported PHP versions page for more information on when different versions were released and what are their active support periods.

Semaphore CI/CD continues to provide all versions mentioned in this report preinstalled on its default platform.

Which version of PHP do you use for your project? Is there something blocking you from upgrading? Let us know in the comments below.

At Semaphore, we’re on a mission to make continuous integration fast and easy. If you’re new to Semaphore, learn more about our hosted continuous integration and delivery service.