Akismet vs Gravity Forms reCAPTCHA Add-On
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| Feature | Akismet v5.7.2 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.7/5 Visit Details | Gravity Forms reCAPTCHA Add-On v1.6.0 · 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 ($) | Gravity Forms reCAPTCHA Add-On ($) |
| 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 | Checkbox, invisible and v3 score-based modes; Server-side token check against Google, with score threshold; Can be turned off per form |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Needs your own Google reCAPTCHA site and secret keys; Needs a Gravity Forms licence key for updates; Hiding the badge requires you to show Google's branding yourself |
| Mentioned in our posts | 2 | — |
| 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 | Checkbox, invisible and v3 reCAPTCHA types ($), Server-side token verification against Google ($), Spam check and submission validation hooks ($), Disable reCAPTCHA v3 for a single form ($), Hide the reCAPTCHA badge with a branding acknowledgement ($), Validate keys from the settings screen ($), reCAPTCHA details on the entry screen ($) |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | — | Stripe (Gravity Forms Stripe add-on) ($) |
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | Gravity Forms ($) |
| Other | Akismet | Google reCAPTCHA ($) |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | — |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | — |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | — |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | www.google.com |