Tested up to is a string the plugin author typed. WordPress does not run a compatibility test and fill it in. On 4 October 2026 the current line in this record is WordPress 7.1: Yoast SEO, Elementor, Contact Form 7, WooCommerce and LiteSpeed Cache all say 7.1.2.
About 24,000 live plugins, roughly one in three, name some WordPress 7 release. About 20,000 still say WordPress 6. About 29,000 say WordPress 5 or older. About 1,200 leave the field blank.
The long tail is where the old versions sit
Restrict the count to plugins with 10,000 active installs or more — about 2,200 plugins — and the picture tightens. About three in four of them say WordPress 7. About 90 say WordPress 5 or older.
| Tested up to | All live plugins | 10,000 installs or more |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress 7 | About 24,000 | About 1,600 |
| WordPress 6 | About 20,000 | About 470 |
| WordPress 5 | About 8,700 | About 50 |
| WordPress 4 or older | About 20,000 | About 40 |
| Blank | About 1,200 | 3 |
A plugin under 1,000 installs is where a Tested up to of WordPress 4 still lives in volume. A plugin that has already reached 10,000 installs has usually had the line moved, because someone is still shipping it.
What this means: an old Tested up to value is mostly a property of the long tail. On a plugin people actually run, the field is usually current. When it is not, that is the exception worth reading twice. Pair it with the last release date: a plugin that says WordPress 6 and shipped last month is in a different position from one that says WordPress 4 and shipped in 2019.
The PHP line is blank on two plugins in five
Requires PHP is a minimum, not a target. A plugin that says 7.4 is claiming it runs on 7.4 and, by implication, that the author has not promised anything about older releases. It is not a statement that the plugin fails on PHP 8.
About 31,000 live plugins leave the field empty. That is about two in five. About 20,000 name PHP 7.4, about 9,500 name something from 7.0 to 7.3, about 8,000 still name PHP 5, and about 5,400 name PHP 8. Fewer than one live plugin in ten has a PHP 8 minimum written down.
| Requires PHP | Live plugins |
|---|---|
| Blank | About 31,000 |
| 7.4 | About 20,000 |
| 7.0 to 7.3 | About 9,500 |
| 5.x | About 8,000 |
| 8.x | About 5,400 |
The large plugins are only partly cleaner. Among plugins with 100,000 installs or more — about 470 of them — about 210 say PHP 7.4, about 95 still say PHP 5, about 70 leave it blank, and 19 say PHP 8.
Classic Editor reports 8 million installs and a PHP minimum of 5.2.4. All-in-One WP Migration reports 5 million and a minimum of 5.3. Both lines are floors the readme still states. They are evidence the header has not been moved, not evidence that those sites are running PHP 5.
What this means: you cannot look up a PHP requirement for about 31,000 plugins, because the author never wrote one. Where a huge plugin still says PHP 5, read it as a stale minimum. The useful question is the Tested up to line and the date of the last release, which tell you whether anyone is still standing behind the current WordPress.
What to check before you install
- Read Tested up to against the WordPress version you run. A 7.x value matches the current major line in this record. A 6.x value can be a plugin that has not yet bumped the header after a release.
- Weigh an old value harder on a small plugin. Under 1,000 installs, WordPress 4 and 5 are common. At 10,000 installs they are rare, so an old value there is more informative.
- A blank PHP line tells you nothing. About two in five plugins have one. Do not treat the blank as “works everywhere.”
- An old PHP minimum on a popular plugin is usually a readme that stood still. Confirm with the changelog, not with the header alone.
The main conclusion
About one live plugin in three says it was tested on WordPress 7. Among plugins with 10,000 installs, about three in four do. The plugins that still name WordPress 4 or 5 are concentrated in the long tail.
The PHP requirement is a weaker field. It is blank on about two plugins in five, and a large share of the plugins people actually run still advertise a PHP 5 minimum that belongs to an older readme. Tested up to, read next to the last release date, is the compatibility signal the directory actually keeps current.
Data note: Figures come from this site’s copy of the public plugin directory, read on 4 October 2026, and are rounded. Tested up to and Requires PHP are author-supplied strings. Install counts are the directory’s own rounded bands. A plugin page on this site shows the raw string for that plugin.