⚡ Standards

Web standards are a set of guidelines and specifications that define and describe various aspects of the World Wide Web.

Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and others, web standards ensure the consistent, interoperable, and accessible design and functionality of websites and web applications across different browsers, devices, and platforms.

According to our statistics, standards are used on 90.1% of all websites.
3.6% of these sites use only one standard, 20.4% use two, and 76% use three or more at the same time.

⭐ Most Popular in 2026

The following chart shows the leading standards on the web in 2026, based on market share.

The most popular is CSS with an impressive share of 95.9%, followed by HTML with 93.9% and Open Graph with 56.5%.

CSS 95.9%
HTML 93.9%
Open Graph 56.5%
JSON 36.7%
RSD 33.7%
DNS Prefetch 33.2%
SearchAction 29.9%
Preconnect 25%
Preload 21.7%
XFN 21.1%
Speculation Rules 15.6%
Pingback 15.3%
XHTML 4.9%
YAML 3.1%
Acceptable Ads 2.4%

You can also drill down by country:

🚀 Country Highlights

Here is a list of standards that are especially popular in certain countries.
Differences between global and country rankings are shown in parentheses.

HTML is #1 in Germany ^(-1)
JSON is #3 in Kenya ^(-1)
RSD is #3 in El Salvador ^(-2)
Preconnect is #3 in Thailand ^(-5)
XHTML is #3 in China ^(-10)
Acceptable Ads is #3 in the British Virgin Islands ^(-12)
DNS Prefetch is #4 in Japan ^(-2)
SearchAction is #4 in Vietnam ^(-3)
Preload is #4 in Indonesia ^(-5)
XFN is #7 in Iran ^(-3)

✨ Top Web Standards

Below is a more detailed list of the top 25 of the 54 standards we track, ranked by their market share.

Rank	Name	Market share
1	CSS Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States A stylesheet language used to control the presentation of HTML and XML documents, defining layout, colors, typography, and responsive behavior across different devices.	95.9%
2	HTML Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States A markup language used to create web pages and is the de facto standard for documents displayed in web browsers.	93.9%
3	Open Graph Menlo Park, California, United States A web metadata standard that defines how webpages are described as structured objects for use in social graphs and enables their consistent representation.	56.5%
4	JSON A lightweight, language-independent data exchange format derived from JavaScript and used to structure and transmit data between systems.	36.7%
5	RSD An XML format that helps client software find the services needed to read, edit, or "work with" weblogging software.	33.7%
6	DNS Prefetch Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States The rel="dns-prefetch" attribute on HTML elements.	33.2%
7	SearchAction Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States A structured data type from Schema.org that describes a website's search capability.	29.9%
8	Preconnect Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States The rel="preconnect" attribute on HTML elements.	25%
9	Preload Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States The rel="preload" attribute on HTML elements.	21.7%
10	XFN An HTML microformat that provides a simple way to represent human relationships using links.	21.1%
11	Speculation Rules Mountain View, California, United States API is used to improve navigation performance by prefetching or even prerendering future navigations.	15.6%
12	Pingback A method for web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents.	15.3%
13	XHTML Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States An XML-based markup language that extends HTML 4.	4.9%
14	YAML Seattle, Washington, United States A data serialization language designed to be human friendly and work well with modern programming languages for common everyday tasks.	3.1%
15	Acceptable Ads Berlin, Germany A set of criteria defined by the independent Acceptable Ads Committee that allows publishers to reach ad-blocking users with respectful, non-intrusive and relevant ads.	2.4%
16	OAuth Fremont, California, United States An open standard authorization protocol that allows applications to obtain limited access to user accounts without sharing passwords across web, mobile, and desktop environments.	1.4%
17	Prefetch Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States The rel="prefetch" attribute on HTML elements.	1.4%
18	IAB TCF Brussels, Belgium An open-source industry standard developed by IAB Europe that helps companies comply with GDPR and ePrivacy requirements when processing personal data in digital advertising ecosystems.	1.2%
19	OpenSearch Seattle, Washington, United States A specification that describes a website's search engine, enabling browsers, apps, and services to discover and integrate it.	1.1%
20	GraphQL Menlo Park, California, United States A data query and manipulation language for APIs typically used for remote client-server communications.	1%
21	Trace Context Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Defines standard HTTP headers and a value format for propagating context information that enables distributed tracing.	1%
22	Sass A stylesheet language that compiles to CSS and allows developers to use variables, nested rules, mixins, and functions.	0.8%
23	CGI Wilmington, Delaware, United States An interface specification that enables web servers to execute an external program to process HTTP requests.	0.8%
24	OpenID San Ramon, California, United States A decentralized authentication protocol based on OAuth 2.0 that enables applications to verify a user's identity through an external identity provider instead of managing credentials directly.	0.7%
25	Less A backward-compatible CSS language extension inspired by Sass that supports variables, mixins, operations, and functions.	0.6%

👉 See Also

Web standards

Data is based on the analysis of 3,324,982 websites.
Statistics were last calculated on March 30, 2026.
For details, see our methodology and disclaimer.