80
WP Popular Posts
The old reliable for trending posts with a few styling wrinkles.
HealthyDeclining
80/100
It provides excellent support and flexibility but requires technical workarounds for styling and caching.
Active installs
~150,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 100k+
Rating
4.5★
248 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
-24%
Declining
538 → 410 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 · -24% in the last year
538/day a year ago→410/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayWordPress Popular Posts is a well-regarded and long-trusted plugin for surfacing trending content, with consistently praised free support, though it has notable friction points around caching compatibility, CSS customization difficulty, and occasional reliability concerns.
What people like
- +Responsive and helpful support, even for a free plugin×8
- +Reliable and stable over long-term use across multiple sites×5
- +Easy to set up with good documentation, shortcode and custom query options×3
- +Flexible layout customization via post_html for developers×2
- +Works well with REST API and page builders like Elementor Pro
Common complaints
- −Incompatible with full-page caching setups (e.g. Nginx, WP Rocket) — uses a backend XHR request instead of prerendered content, undermining caching performance optimizations
- −CSS styling cannot be changed in straightforward ways; requires workarounds such as editing functions.php
- −At least one user reports the plugin stopped working entirely on regular sites as of 2025
- −Time Range setting randomly resets (e.g. from 30 days back to 7 days), requiring manual correction
Review trustReviews look organic
- 4.56★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.50★
- 2%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2023-07-202025-01-102026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 248 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-01-11★★★★★Complete Design Flawxtrabytes
- 2025-05-28★★★★★Great plugin – great supportseegeist
- 2025-05-25★★★★★No css customization optionabre01
- 2025-01-30★★★★★Works good with Elementor!kspr
- 2024-11-23★★★★★Plugin incrívelD
- 2024-10-18★★★★★Simple plugin. Does what it says.smkstoll
- 2024-08-21★★★★★It stopped workingAndrew
- 2024-07-08★★★★★Great plugin!Stanislav
- 2024-04-02★★★★★Near perfectandrebell82
- 2024-03-16★★★★★Perfectgregamer
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.
380
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
421
Prior 7-day baseline
328
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
356
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
-9.7%
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.
20%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
1.73
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
88%
5★ share in analyzed sample
2%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.57 → 4.56★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered