In the past decade, semiconducting qubits have made great strides in overcoming decoherence, improving the prospects for scalability and have become one of the leading contenders for the development of large-scale quantum circuits. In this Review, we describe the current state of the art in semiconductor charge and spin qubits based on gate-controlled semiconductor quantum dots, shallow dopants and colour centres in wide-bandgap materials. We frame the relative strengths of the different semiconductor qubit implementations in the context of applications such as quantum simulation, computing, sensing and networks. By highlighting the status and future perspectives of the basic types of semiconductor qubits, this Review aims to serve as a technical introduction for non-specialists and a forward-looking reference for scientists intending to work in this field.