The read · 26 Oct 2026
The biggest block plugins exist to switch blocks off
The most installed plugins in the Blocks category are the ones that let people avoid the block editor. Classic Editor alone runs on 8M+ sites, 38% of every install in the category. Classic Widgets, Advanced Editor Tools and Disable Gutenberg add another 3.5M+ between them. These holdouts aren't drifting away, even though Classic Editor's last release was 151 days ago and Classic Widgets hasn't shipped in 322 days. When a plugin's whole job is keeping things as they were, slow updates don't seem to cost it much. Nothing below them comes close, so this end of the category is a moat.
The real contest is among the block libraries
The plugins that actually add blocks behave like a different market. Spectra Legacy holds 1M+ installs and shipped 17 days ago. Kadence Blocks is at 600K+ with a release four days ago, and Otter sits at 300K+ with one last week. Release schedules that tight suggest these teams see each other as direct rivals for the same site builders. Category downloads rose 10.9% over the window, so the activity is there, though the data doesn't show which library is picking it up.
PostX's closure on October 10 is the event to watch. It had 30K+ installs, and wp.org hasn't recorded a reason. That leaves a sizable post-grid user base without directory updates, and if the closure holds, whoever serves those sites next could pick up a meaningful slice.
Newcomers are growing from almost nothing
Below the top, the growth is real but small. ZIP AI, an AI site builder, went from about 70 to 2K installs in 90 days, the sharpest climb in the category. DesignSetGo grew from 5K to 8K, the only climber with an established base behind it. The other movers are single-purpose blocks with dozens or hundreds of installs, and the plugins losing ground are the same kind, small tools slipping a notch.
Demand is thin across the long tail. Spread over 2,488 plugins, the category's downloads come to about 3,156 per plugin a month. A newcomer can still find room in the block-library tier, where the leaders ship often but the field is wide and PostX's departure has opened a gap. The classic-editor tier is another matter. Those sites picked their tool so they wouldn't have to change, and the data gives no sign that a challenger can pull them away.
