More than 14,000 WordPress plugins were added to the directory between January and late September 2026. That is more than the totals for 2024 and 2025 combined.
Only about 60 of those plugins reached 1,000 active installs. In other words, fewer than one in 200 reached that level.
The main lesson is simple: building a plugin has become easier, but finding a real need and reaching users has not. This article looks at what helped the stronger launches, which trends became crowded, and where the data may point to better opportunities.
Plugin creation grew much faster than plugin adoption
For many years, the directory added roughly 3,000 to 4,000 plugins annually. The pace rose sharply in 2025, then increased again during the first nine months of 2026.
| Period | New plugins | Share with AI terms in the name |
|---|---|---|
| Typical year from 2021 to 2024 | About 2,000–4,000 | Usually below 5% |
| 2025 | About 6,000 | About 8% |
| Jan–Sep 2026 | 14,000+ | About 11% |
About four in five plugins from the 2026 group still reported fewer than ten active installs. The same pattern appeared whether or not a plugin used AI in its name.
What this means: easier development creates more supply, not more demand. A finished plugin is only the start. It still needs a clear audience, a useful difference and a way to reach users.
AI improved the odds, but most AI plugins stayed small
Plugins with AI-related terms in their names performed better as a group. They were nearly four times as likely to reach 1,000 installs. But the chance was still low.
| 2026 group | Number of plugins | Reached 100 installs | Reached 1,000 installs | Below 10 installs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI term in the name | About 1,500 | About 5% | About 1.3% | About 79% |
| All other plugins | Nearly 13,000 | About 2.6% | About 0.3% | About 80% |
AI clearly helped some plugins get attention. It did not remove the basic launch problem: almost four out of five plugins in both groups remained below ten installs.
What this means: a popular keyword may improve discovery, but it is not a product strategy. The plugin still needs to solve a specific problem better than the available alternatives.
Most breakout installs came from AI, but distribution mattered
Roughly one quarter of the plugins that passed 1,000 installs were in AI & Automation. Together, they accounted for about two thirds of the installs among the breakout group.
Several genuinely new plugin types appeared:
- MCP servers: six breakout plugins let AI assistants connect to and work with WordPress.
- AI provider libraries: three plugins connected WordPress to major model providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
- AI site builders: three products helped users create or manage sites with AI. AI Agent by SiteGround reached the one-million install band.
- Visibility in AI search: two plugins focused on helping sites appear in answers from AI assistants rather than only in traditional search results.
MCP was one of the clearest new areas. By the time of this analysis, the directory contained around 175 MCP plugins, and roughly three quarters had arrived during 2026.
However, the largest launches did not come from unknown teams. SiteGround and Cloudways already served large customer bases. The WordPress AI team released the provider plugins. Brainstorm Force already had established WordPress products and users.
What this means: being in a growing market helps, but access to users can matter just as much as the product. Before building, decide how people will discover the plugin. “Publish it in the directory” is rarely enough.
Two trends show how quickly a gap can fill
The llms.txt rush
llms.txt is a file that describes a site for language models. It is useful, easy to understand and relatively simple to add to WordPress. That made it an obvious plugin idea.
More than 80 plugins used llms.txt in their name, and about 60 of them arrived in 2026. Only three passed 1,000 installs. The leading plugin, Website LLMs.txt, launched about a year before most of the new entries and reached the 40,000 install band.
The lesson: a real need can still become crowded very quickly. Timing, trust and early distribution may matter more than small differences in implementation.
The EU withdrawal-button rush
New European rules created demand for order-withdrawal buttons in online stores. Around 65 plugins addressed this need, and about 60 appeared during 2026. Only five passed 1,000 installs.
The strongest newcomer reached about 5,000 installs. Meanwhile, Germanized for WooCommerce, an established compliance plugin with around 70,000 installs, added the requirement as another feature.
The lesson: a new rule can create demand, but it does not always create a separate product category. Existing products may serve the same need faster by adding one feature.
Before following a visible trend, ask three questions: How many competitors are already building it? Does the idea need a separate plugin? Do established products already have the users and the ability to add the same feature?
Where the data suggests more room
The classification data covers every plugin above 10,000 installs—more than 2,000 established products. This makes it possible to compare large fields and look for a useful combination: proven demand, unhappy users and few recent winners.
| Sub-category | Established plugins | Average installs | Average rating | New winners since 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advertising & Ad Management | 10+ | About 180,000 | About 3.5 | None |
| Payment Gateways & Processing * | 20+ | About 60,000 | About 3.9 | None |
| Email Marketing & Newsletters | About 30 | About 140,000 | About 4.1 | None |
| Polls & Surveys | Fewer than 10 | About 85,000 | About 4.2 | None |
| Link Monitoring & Optimization | About 10 | About 375,000 | About 4.3 | None |
| Comment & Discussion Management | Fewer than 10 | About 165,000 | About 4.4 | None |
Advertising and ad management stands out. It has several established plugins, strong average adoption, the lowest rating in this comparison and no recent plugin above 10,000 installs.
That is a useful signal, not proof of an easy opportunity. Low ratings may show that users are unhappy, but the lack of new winners may also point to technical complexity, support costs or strong incumbents. Reviews and support forums should be the next place to investigate.
Payment gateways show why the extra check matters. The market is large, but payment companies often publish the winning plugins themselves. An independent developer may have limited access to the partnerships, testing and trust needed to compete.
What this means: look for demand and dissatisfaction, but also check whether the market is open to an independent product. A weak rating is a lead for research, not a complete business case.
Attention and market depth are not the same
Some established categories support far more installs per successful plugin than the areas receiving the most attention.
| Category | Average installs per established plugin |
|---|---|
| SEO | About 270,000 |
| Multilingual & Translation | About 230,000 |
| Performance | About 210,000 |
| Security | About 200,000 |
| Design & Customization | About 90,000 |
| AI & Automation | About 70,000 |
AI & Automation had the lowest average in this comparison, despite receiving the most attention from new developers. Multilingual and translation had much stronger adoption per established plugin but attracted very few new breakout products.
What this means: do not use the number of new launches as a measure of market quality. A busy category may simply be easy to enter. A quieter category may have deeper demand—but it may also require more expertise, so research the barriers before choosing it.
A practical way to choose a plugin idea
Use the directory as the start of the research, then move from numbers to real user problems.
- Find a repeated complaint. Read low reviews, support forums and community discussions. Look for a problem users describe in their own words.
- Confirm that people already spend time or money on it. Several established plugins with meaningful installs are stronger evidence than search interest alone.
- Check whether users are dissatisfied. Low ratings and unresolved support threads can show where existing products fall short.
- Check whether the market is open. Avoid fields where a platform owner, payment company or hosting provider controls distribution or access.
- Plan distribution before development. Know which community, integration partner, customer list or search query can bring the first users.
- Start with one narrow result. Solve the clearest part of the problem, test whether users care, and expand only after adoption.
The main conclusion
Fewer than 0.5% of the plugins added in the first nine months of 2026 reached 1,000 installs. That does not mean developers should stop building plugins. It means they should spend more time choosing the problem and planning the launch.
The strongest opportunity is not always the newest trend. It is often a specific, repeated problem in a market that already has users, where current products are weak and an independent developer can still reach the audience.
Start with the complaint, not the headline. Build the smallest useful solution. Decide how it will reach users before writing the full product.
Data note: Figures come from this site’s copy of the public WordPress plugin directory, read on 1 October 2026. “Added in 2026” covers 1 January through 23 September, the newest record available for this analysis. Approximate figures are used to keep the focus on durable patterns. WordPress itself publishes install counts in broad buckets, so they are not exact measurements. See the methodology page for details.