84
The lightweight powerhouse for building complex dynamic sites.
HealthyDeclining
84/100
Users praise the speed and support but find the paid feature boundaries slightly unclear.
Active installs
~550,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 500k+
Rating
4.8★
162 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
-12%
Declining
3,082 → 2,723 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORreviews unevenly distributed over time
Downloads over time
real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03
organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median
Declining · -12% in the last year
3,082/day a year ago→2,723/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayMeta Box is well-regarded as a powerful and flexible custom fields and CPT plugin for WordPress, praised for its performance, documentation, and support, though some users note a confusing free/paid boundary and at least one reported a significant post-preview breakage after a WordPress update.
What people like
- +Strong, responsive customer and technical support×3
- +Excellent documentation, including real-life training examples and sample code×3
- +Lightweight and performant×2
- +Works well with popular page builders such as Breakdance and Bricks Builder×2
- +Actively and consistently maintained×2
- +Capable custom table feature and solid custom fields functionality
Common complaints
- −Post preview functionality broken after WordPress 6.4 update (since 6.4)
- −Unclear free vs. paid feature boundary — some features expected to be free require payment
- −MB Views is less user-friendly than comparable tools (e.g., missing conditional shortcode found in Toolset)
Review trustReviews look organic
- 4.81★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.80★
- 10%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2023-10-182025-02-092026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 162 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-03-12★★★★★Does everything without taking much spacejameshgordy1-shot
- 2025-10-26★★★★★Best Performance and works with Breakdance Visual Builderalamea
- 2025-07-05★★★★★Outstanding Plugin and Incredible Support!zentyx
- 2025-01-11★★★★★Not for adminDan
- 2024-10-03★★★★★Moved from Toolset – so far so goodpsudan
- 2024-09-13★★★★★Lightweight and Powerful – Best on Marketjustauser034675
- 2024-08-20★★★★★Lightweightlunarboy
- 2024-08-16★★★★★Perfect tool, even better supportevenue
- 2024-08-05★★★★★Perfect and much lighter than ACFstefk641-shot
- 2024-08-03★★★★★Great supportJames
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNFor developers & the curious
the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary aboveDownload signals
Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.
2,226
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
2,287
Prior 7-day baseline
2,115
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
9,980
Mean release-day peak (30d)
2,226
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
-2.7%
Week-over-week organic trend
Review signals
Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.
19%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
1.54
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
92%
5★ share in analyzed sample
10%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.81 → 4.81★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered