Akismet vs Stop Spammers
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 | Stop Spammers v2026.6 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.4/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | 20,000+ |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | July 18, 2026 |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | Stop Spammers Classic |
| 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 | Checks IPs against StopForumSpam, BotScout and Akismet; Captcha challenge on login, registration and comment forms; Allow list, block list and activity reports |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Legacy build; new features are not planned; Successor Dam Spam is the recommended plugin; Several external lookups send visitor IPs to third-party services |
| Mentioned in our posts | 2 | 1 |
| 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 | Spam checks run on each request at init, Captcha challenge on login, registration and comment forms, Checks 404 hits for exploit-scanning bots, Allow list and block list screens, Reports of caught spam, Tor exit node and hosting-provider checks, Logs IP address on user registration and login |
| Integrations | ||
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | Akismet |
| Other | Akismet | StopForumSpam, BotScout, Google reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Solve Media |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | 5.0 |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | 5.0 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.0 |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | www.google.com, hcaptcha.com, verify.solvemedia.com, www.stopforumspam.com, botscout.com, rest.akismet.com, api-secure.solvemedia.com |