Last week, WordPress released its biggest and only major update of 2025. This version includes some amazing features.
As I love data, and we use data extensively at our company, WPManageNinja, to build product features and provide better customer support, I wanted to explore the contribution-related data for this version: which companies are contributing, geographical stats, and my thoughts on the current development state of WordPress Core (at the end of this post).
Before diving into WordPress 6.8 Core contribution stats, I’m sharing a few disclaimers for better context:
- The contribution props are collected from the official 6.8 Release Leads Slack Channel. Jonathan Desrosiers shared the stats in the Slack channel (🙏).
- These contributions are for the 6.8 Core development releases, including minor releases after 6.7.
- To gather these stats, I parsed all the contributors’ WordPress.org profiles, their GitHub profiles, Five for the Future company profiles, and their listed organizational individual profiles.
- Both Core contributions on Trac and Gutenberg pull requests on GitHub are included.
- Profiles with an empty company name or location are tagged as “Unknown.”
WordPress 6.8 overall stats
A total of 924 people from at least 73 countries and 282 identified companies contributed to WordPress 6.8. Based on the collected data, there are 326 people with an unknown or no company and 332 people with unknown countries. I could not find any location or country mentioned in their GitHub or WordPress.org profiles.
Country ranking by number of contributions
It’s super interesting to see how much WordPress is a worldwide project. Contributions come from all over the planet.
USA is still number one by with 1,000 contributions, India comes 2nd with 981 contributions. Japan and Australia follow with 680 and 590 contributions each, and Georgia and Italy with 546 and 341 props.
Contributions Map by Country
Country ranking by number of contributors
Let’s talk about contributors. Instead of counting contributions (props), we can count the individuals who worked on this release (the number of people credited in Trac tickets or GitHub PRs). The results are shown in the map below.
India became the #1 contributor for the very first time (most likely) with 155 people, followed by the USA with 101 and Bangladesh with 35.
These countries are followed by the United Kingdom and Germany with 29 and 25 contributors each.
Company ranking by contributions
This list almost stays the same as the previous major version releases.
Automattic remains the most prolific company, with employees credited for no fewer than 2,864 contributions (by 113 contributors), followed by rtCamp with 653 contributions (by 62 contributors) and GoDaddy with 553 contributions (by 5 contributors). Next, we have Kinsta (491 contributions by 4 people), Yoast (361 contributions by 4 people), and 10up with 345 contributions (by 21 people).
If you take a look at the company types, you can see that WordPress VIP / Agencies contributed the most. The top agencies or WordPress VIP members are rtCamp, 10up, Whodunit, Human Made, Multidots, and KrishaWeb. A huge thanks to them.
In the hosting space, we only see GoDaddy, Kinsta, and Bluehost among the big players.
From the plugin companies, only Yoast is in the top 10 list.
It’s worth noting that, Automattic’s contribution is equal to the bottom 98% of the known companies combined.
Company ranking by contributors
Of the 283 identified companies that contributed to WordPress 6.8, Automattic had by far the largest number of contributors, with 113 people involved. rtCamp is the second biggest company in terms of contributors, with 62 people.
10up comes third with 21 people. Whodunit and Multidots are tied for fourth with 14 and 13 people, respectively. KrishaWeb and Authlab each have 8 people.
Individual ranking – WordPress 6.8
Here is the top 30 of WordPress 6.8 contributors. A big thanks to all the contributors.
| WP Username | Company | Country | Contributions (Props) |
|---|---|---|---|
| mamaduka | GoDaddy | Georgia | 546 |
| wildworks | Kinsta | Japan | 461 |
| tyxla | Automattic | Bulgaria | 274 |
| sergeybiryukov | Bluehost | Russia | 260 |
| youknowriad | Automattic | Algeria | 222 |
| audrasjb | Whodunit | France | 215 |
| desrosj | Jonathan Desrosiers | United States | 189 |
| afercia | Yoast | Italy | 187 |
| mciampini | Automattic | Unknown | 180 |
| 0mirka00 | Automattic | Japan | 173 |
| poena | Yoast | Sweden | 170 |
| ramonopoly | Automattic | Australia | 169 |
| gziolo | Automattic | Poland | 126 |
| swissspidy | Switzerland | 126 | |
| johnbillion | Human Made | Italy | 122 |
| ntsekouras | Automattic | Greece | 119 |
| peterwilsoncc | 10up | Australia | 117 |
| joedolson | ** | United States | 107 |
| jameskoster | Automattic | United Kingdom | 105 |
| aaronrobertshaw | Automattic | Australia | 101 |
** Edit: Joe Dolson (joedolson) is sponsored by GoDaddy, Kinsta, and Jonathan Desrosiers.
Five for the Future & Core Contributions
There are approximately 234 companies listed on the Five for the Future Pledge pages. Of these, 118 companies explicitly mentioned contributions to the Core Team on their pledge pages.
Interestingly, only 61 companies had at least one contributor credited in WordPress 6.8. Additionally, many companies pledged significant hours on the Five for the Future page but appear to contribute less to Core development. It’s possible these companies focus their efforts on other areas, such as community, documentation, plugins, or events.
Below are the 20 companies that mentioned Core Team contributions on their Five for the Future Pledge pages, pledged the highest number of hours, and had contributors credited in WordPress 6.8:
| Company Name | Pledged Hours/week | Contributors in 6.8 | Contributions in 6.8 (Props) |
|---|---|---|---|
| rtCamp | 450 | 62 | 653 |
| GoDaddy | 257 | 5 | 553 |
| Awesome Motive | 206 | 6 | 9 |
| 10up | 159 | 21 | 345 |
| Hostinger | 150 | 0 | 0 |
| Multidots | 135 | 13 | 72 |
| Kinsta | 122 | 4 | 491 |
| SiteGround | 108 | 0 | 0 |
| group.one | 105 | 4 | 7 |
| AuthLab | 100 | 8 | 9 |
| Elementor | 100 | 2 | 74 |
| RS WebStudios | 99 | 0 | 0 |
| KDC Tek | 84 | 0 | 0 |
| ControlF5 | 75 | 0 | 0 |
| Rocket.net | 71 | 5 | 21 |
| KrishaWeb | 66 | 8 | 62 |
| Whodunit | 66 | 14 | 249 |
| WPDeveloper | 64 | 2 | 4 |
| WPMU DEV | 62 | 3 | 5 |
| Human Made | 61 | 5 | 130 |
My Thoughts
The WordPress community thrives thanks to the passionate individuals and companies who dedicate countless hours to enhancing the platform with each release. Their efforts have made WordPress the remarkable CMS that powers nearly half of all websites today.
Among these contributors, Automattic stands out as an exceptional leader in every major release. Automattic, reducing their weekly contributor hours to 45 in January and currently pledging 16 hours per week. This may slow down core development significantly in the coming days.
At WordCamp Asia in Manila, I had the chance to discuss Automattic’s contributions with Matt Mullenweg. He shared that the costly legal proceedings with WP Engine have made it challenging for them to resume their full commitment to core development.
As WordPress users, we deeply value Automattic’s contributions and hope for a thriving future for the platform. I believe in the power of collaboration and respectfully encourage all parties, including Automattic and WP Engine, to find a constructive path forward. By resolving these disputes, both companies can continue their invaluable work, ensuring WordPress remains a beacon of innovation and accessibility for years to come.
Other companies should step up, contribute more, and speed up WordPress Core development to drive the platform forward. Core development should stay on track.
Additionally, the total number of contributors has reached an all-time high, with 924 contributors in WordPress 6.8, a positive milestone for the community.
Footnotes:
- Source Data used in this stat: Google Sheet.
- This article was inspired by Jb Audras, who published this type of stats for previous versions.
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