Akismet vs Fluent Forms
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| Feature | Akismet v5.7.2 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.7/5 Visit Details | Fluent Forms v6.2.16 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.8/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | 800,000+ |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | October 16, 2026 |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | Fluent Forms · Fluent Forms Pro ($) |
| 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 | Conditional fields in the free version; reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Turnstile spam protection; Entries and reports kept in wp-admin |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Payments need the Pro add-on; Calculation fields are shown as Pro features; Tracking is an opt-in notice on first use |
| Mentioned in our posts | 2 | — |
| Features (Form plugins checklist) | ||
| Conditional logic | — | Yes |
| Payments | — | Paid |
| Calculations | — | Paid |
| Entries in admin | — | Yes |
| 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 | Conditional field logic, Entries list in wp-admin, Form reports page, reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Turnstile modules, Payment module (Pro) ($) |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | — | Stripe ($) |
| — | Mailchimp | |
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | — |
| Other | Akismet | Google reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile, hCaptcha |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | 6.4 |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | 7.4 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | No | Only if you agree |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | hooks.slack.com, challenges.cloudflare.com, www.google.com, js.hcaptcha.com, ipinfo.io, apip.cc, api.cleantalk.org, moderate.cleantalk.org, fluentform.com |
| Blocks | — | 1 |
| Shortcodes | — | 2 |