Contact Form 7 vs Ninja Forms
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| Feature | Contact Form 7 v6.2.3 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.0/5 Visit Details | Ninja Forms v3.15.6 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.4/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 10M+ | 500,000+ |
| Last updated | October 21, 2026 | October 15, 2026 |
| Editions | Contact Form 7 | Ninja Forms · Ninja Forms extensions ($) |
| Pros | Completely free, with no upsells in the code; Several spam options: Akismet, reCAPTCHA, Turnstile, quiz, disallowed list; Stripe payment field and Brevo contact sync built in | Drag-and-drop builder with calculations at no cost; Submissions stored in your own WordPress database; reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Akismet spam protection |
| Cons | No visual drag-and-drop builder; forms are markup; No conditional logic or multi-step forms without add-ons; Does not store submissions without Flamingo | Payments, multi-part and file uploads need paid extensions; Conditional logic availability in the free core is not confirmed; Extension licences are managed through the vendor |
| Mentioned in our posts | 1 | 1 |
| Features (Form plugins checklist) | ||
| Drag-and-drop builder | No | Yes |
| Conditional logic | No | — |
| Multi-step forms | No | Paid |
| Payments | Yes | Paid |
| File upload | Yes | Paid |
| Calculations | No | Yes |
| Entries in admin | No | Yes |
| Spam protection | Yes | Yes |
| Free version | Yes | Yes |
| More features | ||
| Other features | Form-tag markup editor for fields and mail templates, Block editor contact form selector, REST API for forms and submission feedback, Quiz and Really Simple CAPTCHA tags, Spam check against the WordPress disallowed comment keys, Saves submissions to Flamingo when that plugin is active | Drag-and-drop form builder, Submissions stored in the WordPress database, reCAPTCHA and Akismet spam checks, Payment gateway framework for paid extensions ($), Extension licence activation ($), Multi-part forms extension ($) |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | Stripe | PayPal and Stripe gateways ($) |
| Brevo (Sendinblue) | — | |
| Plugins | Akismet, Flamingo | — |
| Other | Google reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile | Google reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Akismet |
| Requires WordPress | 7.1 | 6.9 |
| Requires PHP | 8.3 | 7.4 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | No | Only if you agree |
| External services | api.stripe.com, www.google.com, www.recaptcha.net, challenges.cloudflare.com, api.sendinblue.com | api.ninjaforms.com, my.ninjaforms.com |
| Blocks | 1 | 2 |
| Shortcodes | 2 | 4 |