PHP CMS comparisons #4 - Filesizes revisited

My previous post is really not that old. I wrote it 13th of September 2023 so less than half a year ago.

A fair bit has changed since then.

Kirby launched Kirby 4 in December 2023, and Craft CMS just launched Craft CMS 5 march 2024.

Sizes from original post September 2023

  1. Kirby CMS (v3.9): 6.1 mb

  2. Wordpress (v6.3.1): 54.9 mb

  3. Craft CMS (v4.5.4): 70.8 mb

  4. Statamic (v4.21.0): 86.3 mb

Numbers February 2024

  1. Kirby CMS (4.1.0): 6.8 mb (0.7mb increase / 11.5% increase)

  2. Wordpress (v6.4.3): 57 mb (2mb / 3.8% increase)

  3. Craft CMS (Craft CMS 4.7.2.1): 78.2 mb (7.4mb / 10.4% increase)

  4. Statamic (v4.48.0): 88.6 mb (2.3mb / 2.67% increase)

Numbers June 2025

  1. Kirby CMS (4.1.0): 7.7 mb

  2. Wordpress (v6.8.1): 60.7 mb

  3. Craft CMS (Craft CMS 5.7.11): 80.4 mb

  4. Statamic (v5.1.4): 97.6 mb

Who cares, right?

In the same way the average weight of web pages has steadily increased over the years, we are (arguably) not building much better sites than we did 10 years ago.

Of course I love progress, and I also understand the issue of backwards capability. Still, think of something like jQuery, with its massive user base, still managing to reduce the size of jQuery 4 compared to 3.7.1.

Or think of Snow Leopard, one of my favorite ever OS updates, managing to make a point out of simply "cleaning up" and having "0 new features". Still the release was full of refinements and little touches. And an upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard actually freed up about 7GB of hard disk space. And this was back in 2009! Thats my favorite type of release.

Whoever feels like double checking numbers and want to give feedback. Great! Shoot me a mail or hit me up at Mastodon :-)