The best web servers compared

The web server is one of the most important server services when it comes to delivering content to the visitors of your website. Over the years certain applications have become established here, whose dominance is only very slowly challenged by competitors. On Linux servers the former market leader Apache was first challenged by Nginx and in recent years the competitor LiteSpeed has become increasingly important. Additionally, Microsoft's IIS is still used on Windows servers. The following article examines which web servers are the best and which of the solutions are the most popular.

What tasks does the web server perform?

Web server handle the majority of the communication on the Internet and are indispensable for publishing a website. The tasks of a web server primarily include exchanging data with a counterpart (client) and forwarding to additional programmes such as a PHP interpreter. If the client makes a request to a web server - for example the loading of a webpage or a download, processing follows a strictly defined sequence:

• A client contacts the server and sends a request
• The web server and the client exchange keys for a secure connection
• The web server analyses the information, contacts the interpreter and passes the necessary data
• If required, the interpreter retrieves additional information from a database
• The interpreter generates a web page in HTML from scripts written in programming languages such as PHP, Python or Perl
• The interpreter hands the requested data back to the web server
• The web server coordinates the connection to the client and sends the response in multiple packets

In summary, a web server's responsibilities are to provide an interface between an internet address, internal software, stored information and the client.

A web server's operation therefore affects a website's performance and, through the consumption of resources such as memory and processing power, also the server speed. This raises the obvious question: which web server is best?

Which web server is best?

All web servers — whether Apache, LitesSpeed, NGINX or Microsoft IIS — have specific strengths that offer concrete advantages in certain situations. The decision for an ideal solution therefore depends strongly on the basic requirements and should be made after weighing various factors.

For example, the Apache web server is an excellent choice for Linux operating systems when the server needs to handle a stable number of requests over the long term. For data‑intensive purposes, NGINX is suitable, offering excellent performance under high load. The alternative LitesSpeed, in turn, supports newer standards, allowing you to benefit from current technologies. Microsoft IIS is suitable for a homogeneous IT infrastructure focused on maximum user‑friendliness via graphical interfaces.

Which web server is most popular?

It is hardly possible to make a blanket statement about which web server is best.

What you can look at, however, is the distribution of market share of the individual solutions. This at least gives an impression of which web servers are most popular.

According to netcraft.com's monthly Web Server Survey by netcraft.com, the distribution for June 2024 is as follows:

Nginx web server leads with 22%, closely followed by the Apache web server with a 20% market share.
The LiteSpeed web server accounts for 4% while the Microsoft IIS web server achieves a 2% share.
The remaining market share is distributed among major cloud providers such as Google and Cloudflare, as well as OpenRetsy Web Applications.

Nginx and Apache therefore remain by far two of the most popular and most widely used web server variants on the web.

The best web servers compared

The following table provides an overview of the main features and characteristics of the web servers presented here:

Apache - the classic among web servers

The Apache HTTP Server, together with Linux and other software, provides the crucial foundation responsible for the development of the Internet in its present form. Since the mid-1990s the combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL and the PHP interpreter (LAMP server) has often been the preferred solution for offering a public website. The 2.x version, available since 2000, is considered the standard for an efficient, universal and freely configurable web server. Its modular system and numerous continually developed plug‑ins allow functionality to be extended to meet individual requirements. Key features of Apache 2 include:

• Free for private and commercial use under its own open source licence
• Very high stability, security and flexibility when properly configured
• Good performance, even with a large number of concurrent connections
• Compatible with Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows
• Excellent flexibility due to a modular design that allows subsequent extensions
• Support for all popular scripting languages including PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, LUA, .NET and JavaScript
• Excellent documentation and extensive community support
• Easy configuration of local directories using .htaccess files

At one time the Apache 2 web server held a market share of over 90 per cent. Since around 2010 this high popularity has declined as increasingly powerful competitors such as NGINX have become an attractive alternative.

NGINX - a modern web server with outstanding performance

The reason for the creation of NGINX — a phonetic abbreviation of the English name Engine X — lay in one of the then biggest weaknesses of Apache (before version 2.4): on websites with very high traffic and numerous concurrent connections its performance progressively fell because each client started its own process on the operating system. NGINX was originally written for the Russian search engine Rambler to meet their requirements for a high-performance web server, in order to answer many search queries quickly and with low resource usage. Key features include:

• Free for private and commercial use under the Simplified BSD licence
• Very high security and stability with clear, user-friendly configuration
• Optimised for low resource consumption with many concurrent clients
• Compatible with Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows
• Modular in design, but offers fewer extensions than Apache
• Indirect support for languages via the FastCGI interface
• Widespread use in Eastern Europe and on high-traffic websites
• Extensive documentation and a large community

Because of its advantages — especially the excellent performance under many concurrent client requests — many large platforms such as WordPress.com, GitHub, Netflix, SourceForge or Wikimedia prefer NGINX as a web server.

LiteSpeed - a web server with rapidly growing popularity

The first version of the LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) was released in 2003, but in the following decade attracted only limited attention due to Apache's dominance and for a long time had a market share of less than 1 per cent. Since around 2015 its adoption has, however, been increasing — RWTH Aachen University (RWTH Aachen) reports in a study a reach of 9.2 per cent for 2020 among websites using HTTP/2. This development can be attributed to several reasons, above all the rapid and consistent support for new standards such as HTTP or QUIC. The characteristics of LiteSpeed include, among others:

• Available in two versions under the GPL and a proprietary licence
• Rapid support for new standards shortly after their official introduction
• Good performance with low and high numbers of users
• Compatible with various Linux distributions such as Debian or CloudLinux OS and FreeBSD
• Can be used as a direct replacement for Apache without changing the configuration
• Native support for various Apache modules and .htaccess
• No integration with Certbot procedures for SSL certificates, for example those from Let's Encrypt
• The number of CPU cores used depends on the licence

Due to its good performance and early adoption of new standards such as HTTP/3, the LiteSpeed web server has carved out a niche primarily used by innovative start-ups, young IT companies and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A major advantage of LiteSpeed is certainly its compatibility with Apache and its configuration files.

Microsoft IIS - the web server for Windows Server

The Internet Information Services (IIS) allow the publication of documents over the network and represent Microsoft's standard web server solution for various editions of Windows. It is included by default in all versions of Windows Server, but can optionally also be installed on Windows 10 or 11. Unlike a classic web server, Microsoft IIS offers additional services, such as publishing documents within internal networks or transferring data via FTP. Its core components include:

• Proprietary licence with one-off or ongoing costs
• Seamless integration into servers and VPS hosting with Microsoft operating systems
• Numerous services under a unified graphical interface
• Long-term support for Microsoft IIS and operating system upgrades
• Moderate performance for small to large numbers of visitors.
• Increased risk of cyberattacks due to closed source and undiscovered security vulnerabilities
• High resource consumption because of the integrated graphical interface
• Support for scripting languages via the FastCGI interface or natively .NET

On operating systems such as Windows Server, Microsoft IIS is a core software component and is automatically installed on the relevant servers. Compared with other web servers, however, it exhibits weaknesses that, alongside the higher costs, also include technical aspects. Although Microsoft Windows plays an important role in industry and particularly on private PCs, it is an exception when it comes to a dedicated web server.

When choosing the right web server, the specific requirements and the type of content to be hosted are crucial. Factors such as performance, scalability, security and compatibility with existing systems and technologies play a decisive role. In addition, licence costs and the available support are important considerations, especially for commercial applications and large enterprise environments.

The best web hosting providers from our test

Rank ↕	Provider ↕	Test Score ↕	Storage ↕	Domains ↕	Contract ↕	Price ↕
1.	4,9 ★ (121)	4.8/5 Excellent 02/2026	10 GB	1	1 months	£2.49/month	View Test	To provider
1.	4,9 ★ (19)	4.8/5 Excellent 02/2026	25 GB		1 months	£12.27/month	View Test	To provider
3.	4,9 ★ (386)	4.6/5 Excellent 04/2026	50 GB	3	0 months	£4.26/month	View Test	To provider *
4.	4,9 ★ (35)	4.5/5 Excellent 02/2026	5 GB	1	36 months	£2.01/month	View Test	To provider *
5.	4,6 ★ (481)	4.2/5 Very Good 02/2026	150 GB	3	12 months	£3.50/month	View Test	To provider

View All Test Results  

As of: April 2026 | Our Testing Methodology * If you click on a recommendation with *, this supports our work. hosttest may then receive remuneration.

Our article is based on our own experience and research as well as information from external sources.

Article update:
Update 06.06.24: Statistics and content updated and a new overview table added.

Sources & further reading on the topic:
https://www.netcraft.com/blog/may-2024-web-server-survey/ (statistics: web server distribution)
https://httpd.apache.org/ (official website of the Apache web server)
https://nginx.org/ (official website of the NGINX web server)
https://www.litespeedtech.com/ (official website of the LiteSpeed web server)
https://www.iis.net/ (official website of the Microsoft IIS web server)