Akismet vs Contact Form 7
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 | Contact Form 7 v6.2.3 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.0/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | 10M+ |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | October 21, 2026 |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | Contact Form 7 |
| 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 | Completely free, with no upsells in the code; Several spam options: Akismet, reCAPTCHA, Turnstile, quiz, disallowed list; Stripe payment field and Brevo contact sync built in |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | No visual drag-and-drop builder; forms are markup; No conditional logic or multi-step forms without add-ons; Does not store submissions without Flamingo |
| Mentioned in our posts | 2 | 1 |
| Features (Form plugins checklist) | ||
| Drag-and-drop builder | — | No |
| Conditional logic | — | No |
| Multi-step forms | — | No |
| Payments | — | Yes |
| File upload | — | Yes |
| Calculations | — | No |
| Entries in admin | — | No |
| Spam protection | — | Yes |
| Free version | — | Yes |
| 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 | Form-tag markup editor for fields and mail templates, Block editor contact form selector, REST API for forms and submission feedback, Quiz and Really Simple CAPTCHA tags, Spam check against the WordPress disallowed comment keys, Saves submissions to Flamingo when that plugin is active |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | — | Stripe |
| — | Brevo (Sendinblue) | |
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | Akismet, Flamingo |
| Other | Akismet | Google reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | 7.1 |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | 8.3 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | api.stripe.com, www.google.com, www.recaptcha.net, challenges.cloudflare.com, api.sendinblue.com |
| Blocks | — | 1 |
| Shortcodes | — | 2 |