Akismet vs Antispam Bee
Compare WordPress plugins and tools side by side. Pick products with “Compare” in the software directory.
| Feature | Akismet v5.7.2 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.7/5 Visit Details | Antispam Bee v2.11.13 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.8/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | 700,000+ |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | August 23, 2026 |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | Antispam Bee |
| Pros | Checks comments and contact form submissions against a shared spam database; Works with Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms; Stats through a dashboard widget and REST endpoints | No captchas, so visitors do not solve puzzles; Local spam database and regular expression rules; IP addresses anonymised before country lookups |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Country, language and Gravatar checks call external services; Blunt rules can catch legitimate comments; No readme in the package, so documentation is thin |
| Mentioned in our posts | 2 | 1 |
| More features | ||
| Other features | Checks comments before they are saved, Spam checks for Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7 submissions, Scheduled deletion of old spam and orphaned comment meta, Block statistics dashboard widget, REST endpoints for key, settings and stats, Webhook endpoint for Akismet account updates, Stats ability for the WordPress Abilities API | Filters comments and trackbacks before they are saved, Comment timing check, Regular expression and spam word checks, Local spam database check, Country allow and deny rules, Comment language check, Gravatar presence check, IP address anonymisation before lookups |
| Integrations | ||
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | — |
| Other | Akismet | pluginkollektiv language API, IPLocate, Gravatar |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | — |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | — |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | — |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | api.pluginkollektiv.org, www.iplocate.io, www.gravatar.com |