Akismet vs Blacklist Manager Premium
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 | Blacklist Manager Premium v2.7.4 · 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 ($) | Blacklist Manager Premium ($) |
| 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 | Checkout risk engine with anti-bot checks; Email and phone validation through third-party providers; Captcha options and a validation receipt block |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Requires a paid licence key from the vendor; Calls several third-party services that have their own costs; Declares the free Blacklist Manager plugin as a required plugin |
| 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 | Checkout anti-bot risk engine ($), Verified search-engine bot allowlist from published IP ranges ($), Email and phone validation through third-party services ($), hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile options ($), Google Places address autocomplete at checkout ($), Payment intent lookup for card-testing patterns ($), SMS verification through TextMagic ($), Validation receipt block for checkout ($), Licence key validation and activation ($) |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | — | Stripe ($) |
| E-commerce | — | WooCommerce ($) |
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | Blacklist Manager ($) |
| Other | Akismet | ZeroBounce ($), TextMagic ($), Google Places ($), hCaptcha ($), Cloudflare Turnstile ($) |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | 6.3 |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | 7.4 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | — |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | numcheckr.com, maps.googleapis.com, places.googleapis.com, api.zerobounce.net, api-bdc.net, yoohw.com, ip-api.com, api.stripe.com, rest.textmagic.com, www.google.com, hcaptcha.com, challenges.cloudflare.com |
| Blocks | — | 1 |