Akismet vs Relevanssi Live Ajax Search
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 | Relevanssi Live Ajax Search v2.6 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 5.0/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | 7,000+ |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | May 12, 2026 |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | Relevanssi Live Ajax Search |
| 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 | Works with default WordPress search without configuration; Results can be restyled through theme template overrides; Uses Relevanssi automatically when it is active |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Some themes need template or CSS changes to look right; Only the live results are improved; full search quality needs Relevanssi; Few settings, so layout changes need code |
| 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 | AJAX live search results, Live search added to search forms and blocks, Theme template overrides for results, Customisable no-results and message templates, Filter for query arguments |
| Integrations | ||
| E-commerce | — | WooCommerce |
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | Relevanssi |
| Other | Akismet | — |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | 4.9 |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | 7.0 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.0 |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | — |