The state of WordPress plugins
Who is winning, who is fading, which markets are already lost, and where there is still an opening. Rebuilt from our own daily data on 78,238 plugins. Comparing 2026-11-01 against 2026-10-02.
The read
- AI is the directory's largest market by download volume, with 3394 tracked plugins competing for 22,209,494 downloads a month.
- Forms is growing fastest, up 65.1% on the previous window.
- Security is contracting, down 33.5%.
- AI plugins now number 3558 of the 78,238 tracked, taking 10.1% of all downloads. The median AI plugin is 6 months old.
Sort by
Winning
Biggest active-install gains, established plugins (10k+ installs, 10+ reviews, no integrity flags)
WPVibe – MCP Server for WordPress, works with Claude, ChatGPT & other AI MCP agents AI · 100K+ 50K → 100K Patchstack – WordPress & Plugins Security Security · 100K+ 60K → 100K Easy MCP AI – Connect Claude to WordPress: MCP Server for ChatGPT & AI Agents Uncategorized · 30K+ 10K → 30K Polylang Multilingual · 900K+ 800K → 900K Fluent Forms – Customizable Contact Forms, Survey, Quiz, & Conversational Form Builder Forms · 800K+ 700K → 800K SiteGuard WP Plugin Security · 600K+ 500K → 600K Internal Link Juicer: SEO Auto Linker for WordPress SEO · 100K+ 90K → 100K Metricool – Social media and site statistics Analytics · 90K+ 80K → 90K WP Umbrella: Security Backup Restore & Monitoring Backup · 90K+ 80K → 90K SureCookie – GDPR Cookie Consent Banner, Cookie Scanner & Script Blocking Privacy & Consent · 70K+ 60K → 70K Koko Analytics – Privacy-Friendly WordPress Analytics Analytics · 70K+ 60K → 70K Spectra Blocks – AI Website Builder for the Block Editor AI · 60K+ 50K → 60K
Losing
Steepest active-install declines over the same window
Nginx Cache Performance · 8K+ 10K → 8K WP SMTP Mailer – SMTP7 Email & Marketing · 8K+ 10K → 8K Delete Pending Comments Security · 8K+ 10K → 8K Contact Form 7 – Success Page Redirects Forms · 9K+ 10K → 9K Posts 2 Posts Login & Users · 9K+ 10K → 9K Brozzme DB Prefix & Tools Addons Security · 9K+ 10K → 9K YITH Infinite Scrolling Uncategorized · 9K+ 10K → 9K Customer Engagement System – Popup Builder, Forms, CRM & Email Marketing Automation Email & Marketing · 9K+ 10K → 9K Chat Widget: Floating Customer Support Button for 30+ Channels, Supporting SMS, Calls, and Chat – Bit Assist Chat & Support · 9K+ 10K → 9K Italy Cookie Choices (for EU Cookie Law & Cookie Notice) Privacy & Consent · 9K+ 10K → 9K Graphina – Charts and Graphs For Elementor Uncategorized · 9K+ 10K → 9K WPS Bidouille Admin & Utilities · 9K+ 10K → 9K
How much of the directory is AI now
3558
AI-tagged plugins tracked
19.1M+
active installs
10.1%
of all downloads we track
6 mo
median age
Fastest-growing AI plugins
Members – Membership & User Role Editor Plugin 300K+ +765.4% Contact Form Email 8K+ +547.7% Crisp – Live Chat and AI Chatbot 20K+ +437.6% Easy MCP AI – Connect Claude to WordPress: MCP Server for ChatGPT & AI Agents 30K+ +273.9% Smartsupp – live chat, AI shopping assistant and chatbots 20K+ +258.2% Grandranker 1K+ +206.5%
The competitive landscape
Every tracked category, by monthly download volume. "Consolidated" means one plugin holds 60%+ of a mature category's installs and it isn't growing; a leader in a still-growing category isn't counted.
| Category | Plugins | Downloads · 30d | Per plugin | Leader share | Growth | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI | 3394 | 22.2M | 6.5K | 54% | -22.9% | Crowded |
| Forms | 2511 | 21.8M | 8.7K | 42% | +65.1% | Crowded |
| eCommerce | 9768 | 17.3M | 1.8K | 33% | -0.6% | Crowded |
| SEO | 2223 | 17.3M | 7.8K | 51% | -8% | Crowded |
| Performance | 1809 | 15.5M | 8.5K | 29% | -6.1% | Crowded |
| Security | 1777 | 15.4M | 8.7K | 19% | -33.5% | Crowded |
| Backup | 556 | 13.3M | 23.9K | 33% | +39% | Thin |
| Analytics | 1826 | 10.7M | 5.9K | 40% | -31.1% | Crowded |
| Page Builders | 1891 | 10.7M | 5.6K | 15% | -3.9% | Crowded |
| Email & Marketing | 2123 | 10.6M | 5K | 31% | +35.9% | Crowded |
| Blocks | 2527 | 8.1M | 3.2K | 37% | -0.3% | Crowded |
| Media | 3284 | 7M | 2.1K | 11% | -0.5% | Crowded |
| Privacy & Consent | 913 | 5.9M | 6.5K | 18% | +19.5% | Crowded |
| Admin & Utilities | 5897 | 4.7M | 801 | 21% | +0.5% | Crowded |
| Booking & Events | 1840 | 3.8M | 2K | 23% | -12% | Crowded |
| Payments | 1681 | 3.1M | 1.8K | 27% | +8.1% | Crowded |
| Social | 1835 | 2.7M | 1.4K | 21% | -1.8% | Crowded |
| Multilingual | 495 | 2.6M | 5.2K | 25% | -7.7% | Crowded |
| Login & Users | 2204 | 2.1M | 953 | 38% | +13.7% | Crowded |
| Chat & Support | 1176 | 2M | 1.7K | 23% | -1% | Crowded |
| Content & Feeds | 1195 | 1.4M | 1.2K | 32% | +18.6% | Crowded |
| Search | 979 | 1.4M | 1.4K | 38% | +27.9% | Crowded |
| Membership | 298 | 680.4K | 2.3K | 35% | -0.1% | Crowded |
| Education | 281 | 594K | 2.1K | 22% | +5.2% | Crowded |
Breaking out
Biggest install jumps in the last 30 days
UpdraftPlus: WP Backup & Migration Plugin 29 Oct 2026 3M+ → 4M+ Polylang 7 Oct 2026 800K+ → 900K+ Polylang 11 Oct 2026 800K+ → 900K+ Polylang 13 Oct 2026 800K+ → 900K+ Fluent Forms – Customizable Contact Forms, Survey, Quiz, & Conversational Form Builder 7 Oct 2026 700K+ → 800K+ Fluent Forms – Customizable Contact Forms, Survey, Quiz, & Conversational Form Builder 15 Oct 2026 700K+ → 800K+ SiteGuard WP Plugin 23 Oct 2026 500K+ → 600K+ Post Views Counter 7 Oct 2026 100K+ → 200K+ LuckyWP Table of Contents 21 Oct 2026 90K+ → 100K+ Internal Link Juicer: SEO Auto Linker for WordPress 23 Oct 2026 90K+ → 100K+Rotting in place
Big install bases running on code untouched for over two years
Layout Grid Block 200K+ 3y stale Health Check & Troubleshooting 200K+ 2y stale Limit Login Attempts 200K+ 4y stale WooSidebars 100K+ 3y stale Search & Replace 100K+ 2y stale Easy Google Fonts 100K+ 5y stale BackUpWordPress 80K+ 3y stale Disable REST API 80K+ 3y stale Title Remover 70K+ 5y stale Facebook Chat Plugin – Live Chat Plugin for WordPress 70K+ 4y staleWhat WordPress itself runs on
via wordpress.org · refreshed 6d agoThe PHP, WordPress, database and language split across every install that reports to wp.org. This is the environment a plugin has to survive in, not the one on the developer's laptop.
- 34% of WordPress installs run a PHP version that no longer gets security fixes. Dropping support for old PHP means dropping that share of the market.
- 0% are already on WordPress 7.2; the rest trail by anything from one release to a decade.
- MariaDB has overtaken MySQL as WordPress's database: 61% vs 39%.
- 53% of WordPress runs in a language other than English. An untranslated plugin is invisible to that share.
PHP version
PHP 8.3 27%
PHP 8.2 23%
PHP 7.4 15%
PHP 8.4 10%
PHP 8.1 9.7%
PHP 8.5 5.5%
PHP 8.0 3.5%
PHP 7.3 1.3%
Everything else 4.2%
WordPress version
WordPress 7.1 64%
WordPress 7.0 7.3%
WordPress 6.9 6.6%
WordPress 6.8 5.2%
WordPress 6.7 2.6%
WordPress 6.6 1.3%
WordPress 6.4 1.2%
WordPress 6.5 1.2%
Everything else 11%
Database
MariaDB 10.11 20%
MariaDB 11.8 16%
MySQL 8.0 13%
MySQL 5.7 12%
MariaDB 11.4 9.6%
MySQL 8.4 9%
MariaDB 10.6 8.7%
MySQL 5.5 3.6%
Everything else 7.8%
Language
English (US) 43%
Japanese 6%
Spanish (Spain) 5.7%
German 5.7%
French (France) 4.6%
Portuguese (Brazil) 3.8%
English (UK) 3.3%
Italian 3.2%
Everything else 25%
Built from Plugin Pulse's own daily crawl of the top 78,238 plugins. Momentum figures compare active-install counts between the two dates above. Plugins carrying an integrity flag are excluded from the winners board, since manufactured installs are not growth. How this works.