What are the best WordPress plugins 2025? Free and premium

The open-source software WordPress is considered one of the best content management solutions worldwide. With it, you can start your own blog or build a compellingly designed website even with little prior knowledge and relatively little time investment. The popularity of the former blog software—now known for its impressive array of built-in features—can largely be attributed to its extensive selection of plugins.

The useful WordPress extensions are quickly installed and expand the platform with numerous features: The selection ranges from extensions for search engine optimization and enhanced security to e-commerce tools and social media plugins.

What is a WordPress plugin?

WordPress already offers the essential functions in its basic version to create new pages, link them together, and start creating new pages right away. However, the content management system truly showcases its full strength with plugins, which significantly enhance its functionality. Whether it’s extensions for shops, security, search engine optimization, or social media integration, WordPress plugins make it possible to expand the open-source platform so that it is perfectly tailored to the needs of the individual webmaster.

A WordPress plugin is an add-on program. It extends the code of the web application, thereby incorporating a new function. Technically, each extension or adjustment of the WordPress code is a plugin. Experienced users with programming knowledge also have the opportunity to change the code on their own and write new functions into the functions.php file of a theme or create their own WordPress plugin. When downloading WordPress extensions, you should always ensure that the source is trustworthy and safe (such as the WordPress repository or the IONOS App Center).

The best free WordPress plugins

WordPress extensions are created by a vast community of developers. Whether an extension is offered for free download or requires payment is at the discretion of the developer. Often, there are two versions of a plugin, with the free variant having limited functionality, allowing the user to access the full features only upon purchasing the extension. Below, we first present our top selection of free WordPress plugins.

The best free WordPress plugins for search engine optimization

Yoast SEO Free

A SEO plugin should be part of every WordPress project. Even hobby bloggers are aware that websites are only read if they can be quickly found on Google. Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress plugins to improve your Google search engine ranking.

With the free edition of the extension, it is easy to prepare your WordPress project for Google and automatically assess the readability of your copy. Although you are limited to one basic main keyword in the free edition, you can plan more extensive keyword strategies with Yoast SEO Premium.

WP Meta SEO

WP Meta SEO also helps you make your WordPress website more search engine friendly. Influence the most important factors of on-page optimization directly from the WordPress backend by not only editing titles and meta descriptions but also managing internal links and permalinks or creating an XML sitemap.

In the free version, WP Meta SEO also supports you in embedding your images: The WordPress extension not only ensures that the images are displayed in the appropriate size but also provides important image SEO-features for the best possible placement in image search rankings.

W3 Total Cache

Caching is an optimal solution to keep the load times of your WordPress project as low as possible—thus impressing your visitors and Google. Once loaded, pages are stored in cache, so no new database query is needed upon revisiting. The WordPress extension W3 Total Cache assists with this implementation. It generates static HTML pages, ensuring shorter load times. This way, you improve the performance of your pages, keeping website visitors satisfied.

Broken Link Checker

Non-functioning links are frustrating and can lead to significant issues: they frustrate your readers and send a negative signal to search engines. Manually checking all links is no longer feasible once your web project reaches a certain size. This is where the Broken Link Checker helps.

The WordPress extension automatically and regularly checks all internal and external links on the website (including in the comment section) and reports faulty links. It can also detect missing images or redirects. As an operator, you receive notifications either in the dashboard or by email, allowing you to directly replace or disable faulty links, images, and redirects.

Antispam Bee

Annoying spam in comment sections is a daily occurrence for bloggers and is neither beneficial for search engine ranking nor user experience. Use tools like Antispam Bee to put an end to the troublesome spam. The WordPress plugin blocks spam bots before they can access forms or comment fields. Optionally, the extension can also check already archived pages of a blog for spam.

In the dashboard, the daily updated spam statistics show values for the detection rate and the total number of blocked comments. Another advantage of Antispam Bee is its explicit compliance with European data protection regulations, making it suitable for websites accessed by users from the EU.

The best free WordPress extensions for content creation

LuckyWP Table of Contents

Tables of contents are a proven way to structure a blog or the pages of a website. They help readers quickly grasp the layout of texts and also serve as classification aids for search engine crawlers. A WordPress extension that automatically generates a table of contents on the desired page is LuckyWP Table of Contents.

For this purpose, the plugin uses the defined headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.). In the settings, the user can also determine the design and positioning of the contents or specify the minimum number of headings needed for the plugin to create a table of contents.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)—sounds complicated. However, the WordPress plugin essentially offers a very simple but practical function to list topic-relevant articles or pages under posts. This is a simple trick to increase visitor engagement by offering them additional relevant content.

To best visually adapt YARPP’s recommendations to your own site, CSS basic knowledge is recommended.

Slider, Gallery, and Carousel by MetaSlider

If you want to showcase a series of images or photos, gallery plugins like Slider, Gallery, and Carousel by MetaSlider are the perfect solution. This practical WordPress extension helps you publish your images in galleries, sliders, or carousels on your website.

Using drag-and-drop, you select images and photos from your WordPress media library and then drop them into the desired MetaSlider template, which you can place anywhere in your project. You can also define appropriate metadata and links with the plugin.

TablePress

The free plugin TablePress is perfect if you plan to create tables on your WordPress website. These can be filled with text and images as well as links and scripting languages like JavaScript. Importing and styling tables using CSS is also possible.

The best free WordPress plugins to integrate forums and online stores

bbPress

bbPress turns your project into a customizable forum or adds one to your existing website. The operator can decide whether the forum should be accessible to all visitors or if registration is required to read or write posts. The WordPress forum plugin also allows certain topics to be marked as “Sticky” or “Closed.”

Setting up a forum with bbPress is straightforward through a central admin account—with just a few clicks, the desired community area is installed and customized to fit your needs.

WooCommerce

With the help of the WordPress shop plugin WooCommerce, a complete online store can be created. Especially beginners with a manageable product range benefit from the ability to manage all essential e-commerce processes—such as product offerings, shipping, or purchase processing—through the familiar WordPress interface.

Navigation and design of your own WooCommerce WordPress webshop can be customized—the setup wizard only generates a main navigation with the four menu items “Shop,” “Cart,” “Checkout,” and “My Account.” To meet the demands of larger, professional online shops, the developer Automattic offers (paid) premium features for the WordPress shop plugin. Learn more about setting up a WordPress shop with WooCommerce in our article “Creating an Online Shop with WordPress.”

Ultimate Member

Whether it’s a forum or online shop: A web project that involves user registration as a central element relies on excellent user management. The WordPress extension Ultimate Member replaces the standard user management of the CMS, making user or customer sign-ups on your site a breeze.

With Ultimate Member, you can quickly and effortlessly create registration and login areas as well as customizable user profiles—directly in the frontend. You can also set up your own directories for registered users if needed.

Contact Form 7

For the success of your online business project, it is essential to be accessible to your users when they have questions or issues. Since WordPress doesn’t provide forms by default, using a WordPress contact form plugin like Contact Form 7 is highly recommended.

The extension can be quickly and easily integrated and comes with all the important features. Basic CSS knowledge is required to visually adjust the contact form to match your preferences.

Ninja Forms

There’s another form plugin that not only has a cute name but is also extremely practical. With Ninja Forms, you can add (contact) forms to your WordPress website where users can enter their information, such as name, email address, and phone number. These forms can also be complemented with payment options. This way, your website visitors have the opportunity to make payments to you easily via PayPal, credit card, and more.

The best free WordPress extensions for added security

Really Simple Security

For security reasons and an optimal rating on Google, it is urgently necessary to encrypt data transmission on your WordPress website with SSL/TLS or HTTPS. The plugin Really Simple Security (formerly Really Simple SSL) supports you in this endeavor—you just need a valid certificate.

Once you have a certificate ready and Really Simple Security installed, you can activate SSL/TLS with just one click. If you want to set up additional security mechanisms like HTTP Strict Transport Security, login protection, or a firewall, you’ll need to opt for the paid Pro edition.

Loginizer

Brute-force attacks have been among the most popular methods used by cybercriminals for years due to their simplicity. With the free basic version of the WordPress extension Loginizer, you can effectively protect your web project against this type of attack.

When you activate Loginizer in your WordPress project, the plugin automatically blocks all IP addresses that have made more than three failed login attempts for 15 minutes. If multiple blocks occur, the lockout period extends to 24 hours. You can, of course, manually remove IP addresses from the blacklist at any time.

All In One WP Security

Over the years, WordPress has become increasingly secure, but due to its growing popularity, it has also become a focus for cybercriminals. With the free WordPress extension All In One Security, you can elevate your project’s security level to a new height—thanks to features like its own firewall, brute-force protection, security scanner, and spam protection.

For particularly critical security elements like the admin username or file sharing, the premium plugin shows a concrete overview with toggle switches in the panel. In the extension’s own dashboard, you can also see a specific security score for your pages, which allows you to read the current status of your project.

The best (paid) premium WordPress plugins

Building on our recommendation of the best free WordPress plugins, we now turn to the top paid extensions of 2025. Often called premium plugins, these paid products typically offer a broad range of features and are frequently accompanied by exclusive support from the manufacturer.

The best premium WordPress plugins for search engine optimization

WPtouch Pro

With the paid WordPress plugin WPtouch Pro, the layout and functionality of your website on mobile devices are fundamentally optimized. The use of this extension ensures that a mobile-friendly version of the desktop version is offered under the same URL—the original version remains unchanged. You can either transfer the entire content one-to-one or customize it individually. For example, it is possible to generate alternative menus or landing pages that are better suited for various mobile devices.

WPtouch Pro is a mobile solution supported by Google, ensuring that your website is automatically marked as “mobile-friendly”. Depending on the selected package, the plugin can be used for 1, 5, 20, or 50 WordPress projects.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is the first choice for many experts when it comes to improving performance for an optimal Google ranking. The WordPress premium plugin ensures, among other things, that all pages of a project are loaded into the cache, allowing them to be delivered faster. For this purpose, a “preload” bot simulates a visit to the website at regular intervals.

Furthermore, WP Rocket reduces loading time by automatically compressing all static files like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS documents. Thanks to the LazyLoad feature, the browser of the website visitors loads all embedded images only when they enter the user’s viewport.

Squirrly SEO Pro

Squirrly SEO Pro makes the search engine optimization of your WordPress project effortless. To achieve this, the WordPress premium plugin offers a variety of useful and powerful AI-supported SEO features like regular keyword suggestions, a blogging assistant, content marketing analytics, or the “Focus Pages” feature, which automatically highlights the most promising pages of your website or store for optimization.

With the “Pro,” “Webdev Kit,” and “Business” plans, you can use the Squirrly features on 5, 10, or 7 WordPress sites, respectively.

WP Fastest Cache Premium

In the premium segment, few plugins can compete with WP Fastest Cache when it comes to caching. Using Mod_Rewrite, the plugin generates static HTML content to optimize the loading time of your web project. When you publish new content, the existing cache of the relevant pages is automatically cleared. Additionally, you can exclude any pages from caching as needed.

WP Fastest Cache Premium also provides various features that go beyond caching. This WordPress premium plugin assists with your SEO efforts through functions such as merging and minimizing CSS and JavaScript code and converting images to WebP.

The SEO Framework

The premium plugin The SEO Framework specializes in Google-compliant white-hat SEO. The extension optimizes WordPress for search engines with the goal of speeding up SEO meaning that the plugin is up to 12 times faster than the competition. Furthermore, The SEO Framework offers features like protection against SEO attacks and a high degree of automation.

The SEO Framework is available in three versions: “Pro” (2 sites), “Business” (20 sites), and “Agency” (200 sites). There is also a free version for testing the plugin at no cost.

Rank Math SEO

With the WordPress plugin Rank Math SEO, you gain access to numerous features that assist you in the search engine optimization of your website: from a rank tracker that reveals how your pages are performing in search engine rankings to a content AI that offers keyword suggestions, and more. The plugin has three paid upgrades overall—Pro, Business, and Agency. There is also a free version, but it lacks almost all useful features.

The best premium WordPress plugins for marketing and analytics

OptinMonster

Without returning visitors, achieving long-term success for your web project is difficult. Well-functioning lead management, therefore, plays a very important role in managing a website. Especially online shop and blog operators rely on optimal tools in the fight for loyal customers or readers. One of the best solutions in this regard is the WordPress premium plugin OptinMonster.

The integrated drag-and-drop editor allows you to create attractive forms in just minutes, such as collecting the user’s email address for initial contact. With simple A/B testing and detailed statistics, you can also measure and analyze the effectiveness of different variants.

Taqyeem

A review function on the website or under various posts offers a great way to measure the satisfaction of website visitors. In e-commerce, reviews also serve as recommendations for potential buyers. Additionally, ratings that can be displayed in Google and other search engine results provide added value for search engine users. The Egypt-based company TieLabs has launched Taqyeem, one of the most successful and best WordPress plugins for integrating a user review system and presenting product reviews (e.g., in test reports).

The presented reviews can be individually customized with the premium plugin, with more than 500 Google Web Fonts, various typography options, and three rating schemes (stars, points, and percentages) available.

MonsterInsights

If you want to measure the success of your web project in numbers, the WordPress premium plugin MonsterInsights provides the right foundation. In combination with Google Analytics, the extension presents you with all relevant numbers in real-time—whether page views, bounce rate, average session duration, or user devices—in a clear dashboard. eCommerce tracking for WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, LifterLMS, and MemberPress is also possible.

Various other areas of your WordPress project can also be tracked with MonsterInsights. These include, for example, file downloads, contact forms, links and tags, as well as the development of SEO score and focus keyword. For each tracking category, the WordPress extension regularly provides clear reports. Caseproof also offers a free plugin version called MonsterInsights Lite, which has fewer features but is good for testing before you decide on a paid upgrade, if applicable.

SearchWP

Since the search function on WordPress is not optimal and makes finding older website content challenging, the plugin SearchWP was created. However, it’s not just the search on your website that gets improved. With a Pro upgrade, you gain access to features like Metrics, which shows you what users are searching for. With this information, you can change and optimize your website’s content accordingly. This is particularly interesting for online shop owners who want to discover which products generate the most interest.

The best premium WordPress plugins for content creation

WPML

If you want to offer your web content in multiple countries, you generally need different language versions to provide all visitors with an optimal user experience. The WordPress premium plugin WPML from OnTheGoSystems provides the right functions for this. With translation aids for posts, pages, taxonomy, and menus, as well as automatic browser language detection, the basic plan offers all the features for a multilingual blog.

The more expensive “Multilingual CMS” plan gives users access to additional translation options, allowing them to translate widgets or texts from themes, plugins, and other WordPress extensions. To coordinate work on multilingual projects, WPML in this version also allows for translation management with multiple users.

The Events Calendar

If you want to present a calendar on your WordPress website, you can do this with the premium plugin The Events Calendar. You can choose to create calendars with new events using the extension or incorporate existing data from Meetup, Eventbrite, Google Calendar, iCalendar, or other sites and apps.

To optimally adapt the calendar to your own preferences, the code of The Events Calendar has been designed to be particularly developer-friendly. In addition, various views are available to present the entered events, for example, by day, week, or month, or in a list. There is also a free plugin version, but it lacks essential features such as premium support and the events manager.

Restrict Content Pro

A well-structured membership management system is indispensable for offering premium content. The WordPress extension Restrict Content Pro supports users in implementing such a paywall and also offers functions for membership organization. With the tool, you can create an unlimited number of membership packages, which can easily be equipped with various access rights.

Restrict Content Pro has interfaces to payment services like 2Checkout, Stripe, and PayPal.

MemberPress

MemberPress is another WordPress premium plugin for managing exclusive website content. You can define in detail the properties for the different membership plans, such as the price, available content, or the duration of the subscription or trial period. MemberPress then automatically generates the registration page through which visitors can purchase the respective offer—inclusive of a button for the desired payment option.

The extension—if desired—sends notifications via email when, for example, a new membership is initiated, a membership is terminated, a transaction fails, or a user changes their plan. Under the “Reports” section, the WordPress membership plugin provides detailed statistics about all active and former subscriptions and payments.

Gravity Forms

With the plugin Gravity Forms, you have access to a WordPress tool that allows you to quickly create forms and embed them on your website using a drag-and-drop function. Additionally, you can easily collect and manage the data provided by users in this way. Gravity Forms offers three license plans—Basic, Pro, and Elite—from which you can choose. When you upgrade the basic version, you receive Pro and/or Elite add-ons that allow additional extensions to be added. These include, for example, Capsule CRM—a software component that provides you with a customer relationship management system.

The best premium WordPress plugins for added security

Akismet

Akismet from Automattic is the premium solution for combating website spam. The filtering service has been around since 2005 and is available by default to all users hosting their project on WordPress.com in the basic version.

To use the features of the WordPress premium plugin for commercial sites, you must subscribe to a monthly plan. The two paid plans offered for this, “Plus” and “Enterprise” (or “Enterprise Plus”), are characterized by extended statistics and prioritized support from the manufacturer. The extension is regularly updated to promptly respond to current spam trends.

Wordfence Pro

With Wordfence, you get a WordPress security plan that protects your project around the clock from malware and other cybercriminal attacks. The core of this package is the WordPress firewall, which receives regular updates to immediately recognize known harmful malware signatures and promptly remove the appropriate malicious software from the server.

For additional protection, an integrated malware scanner, regular checks of WordPress core files, and vulnerability checks are carried out. If needed, with Wordfence Pro, you can also limit login attempts on the server to set up a basic brute-force protection.

Solid Security Pro

Solid Security Pro is another WordPress premium plugin dedicated to protecting WordPress projects. Once you have installed the extension, you can overview and configure the various security features via the “Security Dashboard” in the backend to your liking. Among other things, Solid Security Pro offers a malware scanner, 404 error detection for combating bots, and the ability to replace the default URL for user and admin logins.

Solid Security Pro also offers various features to make logging into your WordPress project as secure as possible for all parties. For instance, you can use the plugin to ensure that users must set strong passwords during registration. The login itself can be secured with two-factor authentication (mobile app, email, or backup code).

The best sources for WordPress extensions

Talking about the best WordPress plugins of 2025 is, strictly speaking, a bit challenging: Since the interests and needs of operators can vary greatly, probably only some of the presented plugins are relevant in most cases. For this reason, independently searching for suitable extensions is definitely recommended. The previously mentioned official WordPress repository, which can also be accessed directly through the content management system, is undoubtedly the most important source for WordPress plugins. Like the IONOS App Center, every new extension there is checked for functionality and trustworthiness, ensuring that downloading WordPress plugins is considered very safe.

However, there are also other sources for extensions—especially for WordPress premium plugins that are paid from the start and not listed in the official directory:

• CodeCanyon: When it comes to feature-rich, paid extensions, CodeCanyon is a leading source. The online platform’s directory contains over 5,300 WordPress plugins and also sells extensions for other content management systems like Joomla or Drupal. Results can be filtered by price, category, sales figures, or rating.
• accessPress: accessPress offers a mix of over 100 free and paid WordPress plugins for download or purchase. For all listed extensions, you can access detailed information (description, release date, price, license, last update time, etc.), documentation, and a live preview.
• GitHub: New WordPress extensions are regularly released on GitHub as well. However, the search can be relatively complicated since you can only search the entire developer platform. Nevertheless, those who put in the effort to search through the over 199,000 available repositories with WordPress extensions will find a lot of useful plugins.

How many WordPress plugins can you install?

There is no limit to the number of additional extensions you can install on WordPress. The number of plugins doesn’t necessarily impact the performance of a website, and it’s entirely possible for a project to remain just as fast, even with many extensions. What matters more than the quantity is the quality of each individual plugin. In some cases, a single poorly coded extension can significantly affect performance or lead to other issues.

Where does WordPress store plugins?

The fact that the installation of new plugins is carried out directly within WordPress greatly simplifies the expansion of the content management system. Whether the package is found and downloaded via the integrated search or added via the import function, users only need to follow the assistant’s instructions to add and activate the desired function. The practical listing of all implemented WordPress extensions also aids in managing them. Meanwhile, the CMS automatically organizes the installed plugins into folder structures by placing all extensions in the folder wp-content/plugins. Language files and translations for the extensions, however, are placed in the folder wp-content/languages.

Install WordPress plugins carefully

There are numerous free WordPress plugins, with new ones being added daily. However, too many plugins can lead to a cluttered backend. Additionally, there’s the danger of unpredictable “interactions.” Incompatibility between different programs and components can quickly create security vulnerabilities. Therefore, you should only install plugins that you actually use regularly. Many administrative plugins can be uninstalled after just one use.