Research · recomputed daily
How concentrated is the WordPress plugin ecosystem?
39,693 wordpress.org accounts publish the plugins in the directory. Fifty of them account for 61.7% of every install this registry can count.
Why the real figure is higher
Three limits sit between this number and the truth. All three push it in the same direction, so the honest reading is at least this concentrated.
- The install counter stops. WordPress.org reports no figure above 10,000,000, and 3 accounts hold at least one plugin sitting at that ceiling. Their true totals are unknowable and larger than what is counted here, and they are, by definition, the biggest accounts.
- Every figure is rounded to one significant digit, so a plugin with 940,000 installs and one with 1,400,000 both contribute a round number rather than a real one.
- One company can hold several accounts. Concentration is measured per wordpress.org account, not per business. A firm publishing under a brand account and a founder’s personal account counts twice here, and merging them would raise the figure, never lower it.
The accounts
Ranked by summed install bands. Being large is not a finding and nothing here suggests otherwise. This is a map of where the ecosystem’s weight sits.
| # | Account | Plugins | Combined installs | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Syed Balkhi | 98 | 21,640,260+ | 6.66% |
| 2 | Automattic | 78 | 18,209,830+ | 5.6% |
| 3 | Yoast | 7 | 13,163,300+ | 4.05% |
| 4 | Elementor | 14 | 12,281,200+ | 3.78% |
| 5 | Rock Lobster Inc. | 6 | 11,117,090+ | 3.42% |
| 6 | WordPress.org | 21 | 11,060,600+ | 3.4% |
| 7 | Brainstorm Force | 34 | 7,032,010+ | 2.16% |
| 8 | LiteSpeed Technologies | 2 | 7,010,000+ | 2.16% |
| 9 | David Anderson / Team Updraft | 16 | 6,338,330+ | 1.95% |
| 10 | 3 | 5,060,300+ | 1.56% | |
| 11 | Mark Maunder | 1 | 5,000,000+ | 1.54% |
| 12 | ServMask | 1 | 5,000,000+ | 1.54% |
| 13 | WooCommerce | 29 | 4,441,900+ | 1.37% |
| 14 | Softaculous | 12 | 4,350,000+ | 1.34% |
| 15 | Rank Math SEO | 2 | 4,200,000+ | 1.29% |
| 16 | mndpsingh287 | 9 | 4,050,640+ | 1.25% |
| 17 | Hostinger | 2 | 4,000,000+ | 1.23% |
| 18 | WP Engine | 15 | 3,512,310+ | 1.08% |
| 19 | WebFactory | 28 | 3,481,000+ | 1.07% |
| 20 | Really Simple Plugins | 4 | 3,117,000+ | 0.96% |
| 21 | SiteGround | 5 | 3,082,000+ | 0.95% |
| 22 | WPDeveloper | 47 | 2,864,810+ | 0.88% |
| 23 | Nexcess | 23 | 2,577,510+ | 0.79% |
| 24 | WPMU DEV - Your All-in-One WordPress Platform | 9 | 2,390,000+ | 0.74% |
| 25 | John Godley | 15 | 2,114,900+ | 0.65% |
What concentration does and does not mean
Concentration is not wrongdoing. It does mean that changes affecting a small number of accounts can affect a large number of sites. That is why this registry records every change of the account behind a plugin, and why a handover of several plugins at once is treated as one event rather than several unrelated ones.
Recomputed daily from 39,693 accounts across the directory. Method and limits above; the underlying observations are on each plugin and category page.