Akismet vs Zero Spam for WordPress
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 | Zero Spam for WordPress v5.7.14 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.1/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | 20,000+ |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | October 23, 2026 |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | Zero Spam for WordPress |
| 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 | No captchas or moderation queues for visitors; Blocks IPs and countries from admin settings; Integrations for many form and commerce plugins |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Quota-limited Zero Spam API; upgrade is needed for higher volumes; Some lookups need your own IP service API keys; Sharing spam data with the vendor is an opt-in setting |
| 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 and bot blocking with no visitor captcha, Stop Forum Spam reputation lookup, Geolocation lookups with ipstack or ipinfo keys, REST API for network settings, Optional sharing of anonymous spam detections, Integrations for WPForms, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Formidable and others, API usage monitoring and quota alerts |
| Integrations | ||
| E-commerce | — | WooCommerce |
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | Gravity Forms, WPForms |
| Other | Akismet | Stop Forum Spam, ipstack, IPinfo, ipbase |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | 6.9 |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | 8.2 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | No | Only if you agree |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | www.zerospam.org, api.stopforumspam.org, api.ipinfo.io, api.ipbase.com, api.ipstack.com |