Akismet vs Simple CAPTCHA with Cloudflare Turnstile
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 | Simple CAPTCHA with Cloudflare Turnstile v1.44.0 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.6/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | 200,000+ |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | September 29, 2026 |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | Simple CAPTCHA with Cloudflare Turnstile |
| 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 | Turnstile on login, registration and comments; Integrations for Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms and Elementor; Free |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Relies on Cloudflare Turnstile service; Optional reCAPTCHA fallback contacts Google |
| 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 | Turnstile on the login form, Turnstile shortcode, Contact Form 7 integration, Gravity Forms integration, Mailchimp for WordPress integration, Elementor integration |
| Integrations | ||
| — | Mailchimp for WordPress | |
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms |
| Other | Akismet | Cloudflare Turnstile, Google reCAPTCHA fallback |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | 4.7 |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | — |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | challenges.cloudflare.com, www.google.com |
| Shortcodes | — | 4 |