74
Remove Category URL – Remove 'category' base from category permalinks
Pretty permalinks that might break your entire site if you leave.
HealthyGrowing
74/100
It cleans up URLs effectively but carries a high risk of breaking your site if you deactivate it.
Active installs
~55,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 50k+
Rating
4.2★
58 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
+773%
Growing fast
24 → 210 installs/day
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
Growing fast · +773% in the last year
24/day a year ago→210/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayRemove Category URL is a simple, single-purpose plugin that many users find effective for cleanly stripping the "category" base from permalinks, but it carries a meaningful risk of breaking the entire site if deactivated without following a workaround, and some users report it blocking Google's indexing crawler.
What people like
- +Removes the 'category' slug from URLs cleanly, without the side effects (404s, redirect issues) that come from using WordPress's built-in permalink settings alone.×4
- +Works as a zero-configuration install — no settings page needed, just activate and it functions.×3
- +Reported to work correctly despite years without updates, as the underlying WordPress category base mechanism has not changed.×3
Common complaints
- −Deactivating the plugin breaks the entire site (pages, posts, and links all stop working), and the FAQ provides no guidance on how to safely remove it.×2
- −At least one user reports the plugin caused Google Search Console to flag all URLs as invalid, blocking the Googlebot from indexing the site entirely.
- −Adds unwanted elements to the WordPress admin area and promotes the developer's own blog.
- −Some users report it simply does not work as described.×2
Review trustMostly organic
- 4.21★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.20★
- 10%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
- past spikeReview timing — up to 50% of all reviews landed in a single month
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2023-08-192025-01-102026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 58 total
Latest reviews · 58 analyzed
- 2025-12-06★★★★★Уникайте!Laset
- 2023-08-06★★★★★Warning, blocks Google's indexing robot!spamlover1-shot
- 2023-03-12★★★★★Perfecto para mejorar las urls de nuestra webcarlosmartinez001
- 2022-09-26★★★★★Not working with latest WP versionPUShAUNE
- 2022-06-28★★★★★Still works perfectlyhfng
- 2021-07-31★★★★★Still Works Greatstudioactiv8
- 2020-11-11★★★★★Works like a charm!toad78
- 2020-06-06★★★★★Great and without side effects!housePeople29
- 2020-06-05★★★★★Doesn't work as promisedbhutjolokia
- 2020-02-13★★★★★great !Ümit Solmaz
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.
113
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
193
Prior 7-day baseline
266
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
2,408
Mean release-day peak (30d)
398
Latest day · 2026-06-03(tail)
-41.5%
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.
50%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
4.06
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
78%
5★ share in analyzed sample
10%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.22 → 4.21★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered