After a year of development, a new stable branch of the HTTP server and multi-purpose proxy server nginx 1.28.0 has been published, incorporating the changes accumulated in the main branch 1.27.X. Moving forward, all changes in the stable branch 1.28 will focus on eliminating critical errors and vulnerabilities. The upcoming main branch of Nginx 1.29 will continue to develop new capabilities. For regular users not needing compatibility with third-party modules, it is advised to use the main branch, which will serve as the basis for the production of the commercial product Ngin Plus in three months.
According to the March report by Netcraft, NGINX currently powers approximately 245 million websites (compared to 243 million two years ago and 289 million three years ago). Nginx is utilized on 17.89% of all active sites, securing its position as the most popular web server. Apache follows at 16.03%, Cloudflare at 17.81%, and Google at 9.89%.
Looking at all NGINX sites collectively, it maintains a dominant position with 20.48% of the market share. In comparison, Apache trails at 16.03%, Cloudflare at 12.87%, and openResty at 9.36%. Among the top million most visited sites globally, Nginx ranks second with a 20.37% share, following Cloudflare at 22.32%. Apache holds a 17.95% share.
According to data from w3Techs, Nginx is used on 33.8% of the most visited websites. Apache’s share dropped from 30.1% to 26.3%, while Microsoft IIS decreased from 5% to 4%. Node.js saw an increase from 3.2% to 4.4%, and LiteSpeed rose from 12.9% to 14.6%.
Noteworthy improvements introduced during the formation of the main branch 1.27.x include support for the QUIC protocol and the Cubic network congestion