5 Best WordPress Plugins to Stop Comment Spam in 2026
How do you stop comment spam on WordPress? Spam bots never sleep. Over the years QuickOnlineTips has received more than 3 million spam comments, and without good filters the real comments get buried. Akismet alone is not always enough on busy blogs, and the GASP plugin we once recommended is no longer maintained. Here are the best WordPress plugins to stop comment spam in 2026, and how to combine them.
Quick answer: The best plugins to stop comment spam are Akismet (cloud spam filter by Automattic), Antispam Bee (free and privacy-friendly), WP Armour (invisible honeypot), Simple CAPTCHA with Cloudflare Turnstile (free, cookie-less CAPTCHA) and CleanTalk (paid cloud service). Use one filter plus one bot blocker, not five plugins at once.
Table of Contents
Best WordPress plugins to stop comment spam
1. Akismet
Akismet checks every comment against a huge cloud database of spam and catches most of it automatically. It is free for personal blogs and paid for commercial sites. By default it can silently delete the worst spam, which you can change in settings.
2. Antispam Bee
Antispam Bee is free, needs no account and does not send personal data to outside servers, making it popular with sites that care about GDPR. It uses honeypots, local spam databases and country or language filters. Over 700,000 sites use it.
3. WP Armour – Honeypot Anti Spam
WP Armour adds an invisible honeypot field that bots fill in but humans never see, so spam is blocked before it is saved. No CAPTCHA, no annoyance for readers.
4. Simple CAPTCHA with Cloudflare Turnstile
Simple CAPTCHA with Cloudflare Turnstile adds Cloudflare’s free, privacy-preserving Turnstile check to comments, login and registration forms. Most visitors never have to solve a puzzle. It also protects forms from Contact Form 7, WPForms and WooCommerce.
5. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk
CleanTalk is a cloud anti-spam service that blocks spam comments, registrations and form submissions without CAPTCHA. It costs about $12 a year per site after a free trial.
Best combination
- Small blog: Antispam Bee or Akismet.
- Busy blog: Akismet plus WP Armour or Turnstile.
- Sites with many forms: CleanTalk or Turnstile to cover comments, login and contact forms.
Built-in WordPress settings that cut spam
Go to Settings > Discussion and:
- Close comments on articles older than 60 or 90 days.
- Hold comments with two or more links for moderation.
- Require the comment author to have a previously approved comment.
- Add common spam words to the “Disallowed Comment Keys” list.
You can also ban spammer IP addresses, remove the URL field from comments so there is less reason to spam you, and learn to moderate WordPress comments quickly.
FAQ
Is Akismet free?
Free for personal, non-commercial blogs. Business sites need a paid plan.
Do CAPTCHAs hurt real comments?
Hard puzzles do. Invisible honeypots and Cloudflare Turnstile block bots without bothering most humans.
Why do spammers target my blog?
To get links. Nofollow comment links and a hidden URL field reduce the incentive.
How much spam does your blog get? Share your favourite plugin in the comments.
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I have tried all of above for my wordpress website but still getting 80-100 spam comments every day
hi there
this is a great helpful post but i need to know that do if i am using only facebook comment box then do i need to use Akismet to stop comment spam will it work on facebook comment on my WordPress blog
thank u
Nice tips.these awesome plugins are really helpful to get spam free comments
You have described beautifully to all these all together.
Great post with nice recommendations to avoid spam in our WordPress blogs.
I will also add Goodbyecaptcha to your list. This plugin is doing an excellent job!
is spam comment affect our site and plz reccomend me a best plugin which is free of cost.
Yes spam comment affect our website.
WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam, anti spam bee and akismat plugins are best (Y)
Thanks for sharing. I have tried a few but few spams do creep in. I will try the ones you suggested.
Bye bye spammers :D thankx for the post
Thanks for the useful tip. My blog is having this spamming problem and this method may help. I shall get back to you.
There are many plugins to stop spam comments on WordPress. Basic tool is enough if your site is not big attractive and in high traffic.
Hii, Growmap Anti Spambot is the one I found simple and working to help stop spam, Akismet also helps a lot as it says that it had blocked lots of spam comments.. I didn’t tried Captcha yet but will try it in near future :)
Recently, I came across many websites who are using “Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin”. At first I thought it is just a feature pre-configured with comment plugin. But now I know it isn’t, nice plugin.
i Think preloaded plugins for comment spaming is working fine. hard solving capecha could be run away real viewers .
Of the plugins you have mentioned, i think Captcha is the worst as it is at times really hard to read for me.. this may dissuade genuine bloggers who may just want to share their views on an article
These are great plugins, thanks for sharing.
Great article with some valuable points! I think now a days it is a fastest way to find where web pages losing the traffic.
Thanks for sharing!
please write blogs like this and make them live which would quite really helpful to all of us.
Thanks
Thanks heaps for this, much appreciated. Once removed trackbacks from blog posts I don’t get a lot of spam anymore – it seemed like somehow that was how they were finding out where pages were. Not sure if I’ve done something stupid though because I don’t fully understand it (I’m a photographer, not a web guru!) – if so then if someone can let me know it would be awesome! I have a WordPress site. Cheers! Jon
Growmap Anti Spambot and SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam is best for blocking spam comments but many times they failed to do their job. And Akismet is just more sensitive, it even mark genuine comment as spam.
I thought this blog is very important to learn how to grow blog so I bookmarked this.
I have struggled with comment spam and totally forgot about akismat. I’m not sure why I never tried it, I guess I thought it was a bit commercial and thought something else may be more effective. Thank you for the post!
Yes this is quite good. Spamming is the most considerable topic today for the website owners.
You also got to see which CAPTCHA is good for your audience. I work with home care/seniors and it seemed to me if i had trouble reading the CAPTCHA so would they.
Hii, Growmap Anti Spambot is the one I found simple and working to help stop spam, Akismet also helps a lot as it says that it had blocked lots of spam comments.. I didn’t tried Captcha yet but will try it in near future :)
Getting excited about reading more. Great blog post.Really looking forward to read more. Great.
Yes this is quite good. Spamming is the most considerable topic today for the website owners. This post is really nice for all of us. I can also make use of these tips to prevent spamming. To comment on a post has a great meaning, you put your relevant ideas to the author. But nowadays it is nothing but a medium of doing spam and self promotion. So, i would like to say thanks to the author as they helped to all of us. Keep going.
I have struggled with comment spam and totally forgot about akismat. I’m not sure why I never tried it, I guess I thought it was a bit commercial and thought something else may be more effective. Thank you for the post!
Captcha is the thing which users hate but for bloggers or webmasters it is must to prevent hundreds of spam comments. I personally use it along with Akismet plugin and quite satisfied with the service.
Hi, Nice plugins. I get a lot of spam comments so these plugins would be useful. I like your idea of spending less time on the comments and more time on blogging.
Hi,
This four word press plugin is really nice. I am going to use one of plugin in my upcoming project .Thanks for the wonderful post.
Spamming is always going to be a problem, but these tips might help us out a little bit.
I switched from captcha comment on my blog to a manual review of all comments. unfortunately that was the only way to stop comment spam.
It’s Really Amazing Post. Thanks.
I do use akismet to prevent comment spam in my wordpress blog and I must say it’s quite effective too.
I really impressed with your post. You discussed useful points for stop comment spam. I definitely follow this useful plugins. Thanks to share it.
The one of the best is to use premium akismet version for better response
Love post to share with all, it can be very useful to all the bloggers.
I gotta say, this post has a lot for their readers. It is compulsory for every blogger to safe their site from spammers and this post means a lot for them.
Now this is really amazing, how can you people manage to get stuff like this? Man, this is really worth reading and I am going to bookmark your blog for this. Keep updating us.
Great post! I was wondering, for a small blogger like myself, which wold you recommend using?
I have bookmarked this blog and really all tips are very helpful :D
I know about Anti Grow Map and also uses it over my various WP blogs because Akismet never worked for me and yeah I agree with this blog post because it really works in managing spam comments.
Thanks for helping all of us to organize some of the best plugins which cant be ignore for betterment and quality
I have just set up a new site using wordpress and i am already getting a ton of spam which is kind of annoying, hopefully this guide will help.
Spammer is always a big headache for me and things that u have shared here i hope it will help me a lot to prevent the spamming
What about CommentLuv premium? it works great too, you need to try it out
This is Really Helpful and Valuable Post. Thanks for Sharing with us.
To be protected from spam bots, there are different techniques being used now a days. Some of the captcha used are even really tough to read and one can really become irritated by applying it more than one time. The plugins that you have mentioned are nice ones and people must use these type of plugins to stop spamming.
this is a great article for everyone. i think if you read this article you can understand all your problem in your wordpress. nice share
The problem that people also don’t recognise is that some spam is not comment spam but linkback spam. So you need to guard from both sides. So these are fantastic and I will be trialling some but if you know any plugins that also fight linkback spam that would be fabulous.
Must admit, always hated the whole captcha thing. I have been using Are You Human for a while. It gets you to play a simple game to prove you are human!
Sometime Captcha is good Because it prevent Spamming on websites.