Akismet vs Gravity Forms
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 | Gravity Forms checked 23 Oct 2026 Paid Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | — |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | — |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | — |
| 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 | Drag-and-drop form builder with conditional logic; Multi-page forms, file uploads and calculations; Entries screen, notifications and merge tags |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Paid product that needs a licence key for updates; Payment gateways are separate paid add-ons; Sends weekly telemetry to the vendor without a visible opt-in |
| Mentioned in our posts | 2 | 1 |
| Features (Form plugins checklist) | ||
| Drag-and-drop builder | — | Yes |
| Conditional logic | — | Yes |
| Multi-step forms | — | Yes |
| Payments | — | Yes |
| File upload | — | Yes |
| Calculations | — | Yes |
| Entries in admin | — | Yes |
| Spam protection | — | Yes |
| Free version | — | No |
| 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 | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | — |
| Other | Akismet | — |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | — |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | — |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | — |
| Phones home | No | — |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | — |