If you’re using WordPress, you need to make your site as secure and safe as possible. With so many different options available, it can be hard to find the best security plugin for protecting your site.
But when it comes to security, not all plugins are created equal. In this article, we’re going to cover some of the top security plugins you should consider and which ones are compatible with WordPress.
1. Wordfence Security (Free / Paid)
Wordfence Security offers both free and premium versions, which is a leading security plugin with over 4 million users and has awesome features like plugin files, theme files, posts, comments for suspicious code, incorrect URLs, comment spam filters, country blocking, remote scanning, two-factor authentication, and more.
Key of Features:
- The free version offers a firewall and lives traffic monitoring.
- On the Premium feature version, you will get real-time malware signature updates.
- The free version offers login attempt limits to stop brute force attacks.
- The premium version has comment spam filters, country blocking, and remote scanning.
- Firewalls, malware, and malicious IP addresses help you to keep the website clean.
- A remote system with two-factor authentication
Price: $99 /per year
Active Installations: 4+ million
Average User Ratings: 4.5/5*
2. Defender (Free / Paid)
Defender adds the best in WordPress security plugin to your website with just a few clicks.
Defender starts with a list of one-click hardening techniques that will instantly add layers of protection to your site.
Key of Features:
- Stop brute force login attacks, SQL injections, cross-site scripting XSS, and other WordPress vulnerabilities.
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) login security.
- Malware scanner, antivirus scans, IP blocking, firewall, activity log, security log.
- Audit Log that tracks every user’s action.
- Google reCAPTCHA – easy to add, stop fraud and abuse
Price: On Membership cost US$7.50/month
Active Installations: 70,000+
Average User Ratings: 5/5
3. Sucuri Security (Free / Paid)
All WordPress users are eligible for free access to the Sucuri Security WordPress plugin. It is a security suite that is designed to supplement the security posture that you already have.
GoDaddy is now the owner of this security plugin as of the moment because ownership was transferred to them.
Key of Features:
- Security Activity Auditing
- File Integrity Monitoring
- Remote Malware Scanning
- Blocklist Monitoring
- Effective Security Hardening
- Post-Hack Security Actions
- Security Notifications
- Website Firewall (premium)
Price: $199.99/year
Active Installations: 800,000+
Average User Ratings: 4/5
4. iThemes Security (Free / Paid)
Since 2008, we have been working on developing all of the core tools that are necessary for WordPress. We want to be your one-stop shop for all the fundamental tools that are necessary for WordPress, from site management to backups to site security.
The installation and onboarding process for iThemes Security was developed to make it possible for anyone to protect their WordPress website in less than ten minutes, even without having a degree in computer security.
Key of Features:
- Real-time WordPress security dashboard
- Protect from Brute force attacks,
- Has banned users, active lockouts, and site scan results features.
- Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
- reCAPTCHA(Pro)
- Passwordless Logins (Pro)
- Trusted Devices (Pro)
- Local Brute Force Protection
- Network Brute Force Protection
- Enforce SSL
- Database Backups
- Identify Server IPs
- View or flush the server security rules generated
- Permanently block repeat offenders from accessing your site.
Price: $80/year
Active Installations: 1+ million
Average User Ratings: 4.5/5
5. All In One WP Security & Firewall (Free)
All In One WP Security & Firewall reduces security risk by checking for vulnerabilities, and by implementing and enforcing the latest recommended WordPress security plugin practices and techniques.
Key of Features:
- Password strength tool to allow you to create very strong passwords.
- Stop user enumeration.
- Protect against Brute Force Login Attack.
- Monitor/View failed login attempts.
- reCAPTCHA
- Schedule automatic backups.
- Ban users by specifying IP addresses.
- Block access to debug log files.
- WordPress PingBack Vulnerability Protection feature.
- Block fake Googlebots
- Block Brute Force Login Attacks
- Block SPAM comments
- File change detection scanner
Price: Free
Active Installations: 1+ million
Average User Ratings: 5/5
6. Jetpack (Free / Paid)
Jetpack Security is an easy-to-use and comprehensive WordPress site security plugin that protects against malware and spam performs automatic real-time backups and provides easy restores.
Free to use are essential features such as brute force protection and monitoring for both downtime and uptime.
Key of Features:
- Coordination, debug, maintenance, or troubleshooting feature.
- Malware scans and security scans.
- Block spam comments.
- Anti-spam.
- Brute force attack protection.
- Backup your site automatically
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) login security.
- Monitor site uptime/downtime.
Price: $9.95/year
Active installation : 5+ million
Average User Ratings: 4/5
7. Shield Security (Free / Paid)
Shield is the only security plugin solution that provides NO NONSENSE defense and protection for your WordPress websites against all forms of harmful bots and hackers.
With our one-of-a-kind, invisible “CAPTCHA” technology, you’ll be able to restrict the number of times users may try to log in, thwart brute-force assaults, and stop any SPAM comments generated by bots.
Key of Features:
- Invisible “CAPTCHA” technology.
- Limit login attempts.
- Block spam comments.
- Blocks bad IP addresses
- Brute force attack protection.
- Backup your site automatically
- AntiBot Detection Engine
- Detect Bots, Intrusions, and Hacks
- Malicious visitors detection
- Powerful Firewall Security Rules
- (MFA) Two-Factor / Multi-Factor Login Security Authentication
- Create a Private Secure Login URL by hiding wp-login.php
- Block Anonymous Rest API
- File Security Scanner
- reCAPTCHA & captcha support
Price: $59 / year
Active Installations: 60,000+
Average User Ratings: 5/5
8. BulletProof Security (Free / Paid)
BulletProof Security Pro Forum sticky topics (highlighted in yellow) can be found by clicking the BPS Pro Forum menu.
BulletProof provides both manual and scheduled database backups, as well as security logging and HTTP error logging, as well as the option to switch into maintenance mode. This allows you to make changes to your site without risking your visitors experiencing any performance issues as a result.
Key of Features:
- Wizard AutoFix (AutoWhitelist|AutoSetup|AutoCleanup).
- MScan Malware Scanner
- .htaccess Website Security Protection (Firewalls)
- Login Security & Monitoring
- Auth Cookie Expiration (ACE)
- Scheduled DB Backups
- Blocks bad IP addresses
- Security Logging
- HTTP Error Logging
- WordPress Automatic Update Options
- Force Strong Passwords (FSP)
- Real-time File Monitor (IDPS)
- JTC Anti-Spam|Anti-Hacker
- Uploads Folder Anti-Exploit Guard (UAEG)
- Auth Cookie Expiration (ACE)
- Force Strong Passwords (FSP)
Price: $69.95 / year
Active Installations: 40,000+
Average User Ratings: 5/5
9. MalCare (Free / Paid)
MalCare will keep your website safe without affecting its performance in any way. For the best possible protection of your website, invest in real-time firewall protection, automated virus scans, and eradication with a single click.
MalCare Security Plugin is designed to assist website owners in worrying less about the safety of their websites, achieving mental peace, and directing all of their efforts into expanding their businesses or websites.
Key of Features:
- Automatic one-click malware removal (Paid)
- Cloud-Based Malware Scanning (Free)
- Deep Malware Scanning – Files & Database (Free)
- Web Application Firewall (Free)
- Plugin-Based Firewall (Free)
- Rules update every 7 days (Free)
- Login Page Protection (Free)
- Blocks hacker BOTS from attacking the login page.
- Identifies & blocks MALICIOUS traffic.
- Block hackers and bots
- Smart Captcha-Based Login.
- Geo-Blocking (Paid).
- Uptime Monitoring.
- Stop Brute force attacks.
- Stop WordPress redirect hack.
- Stop WordPress spam link injections.
- Stop SQL injection hack.
Price: $99 / year
Active Installations: 200,000+
Average User Ratings: 4/5
10. Security Ninja (Free / Paid)
The Security Ninja plugin provides more than 50 security tools in an instant and enables you to discover issues you didn’t even know existed. Help yourself now with Ninja’s simplicity and ease of use.
Key of Features:
- Automatically block 600+ million bad IPs with one click.
- Vulnerability scanner
- Prevent 0-day exploit attacks
- Stop Brute force attacks.
- Block Suspicious Page Requests (Paid)
- Country Blocking (Paid)
- Core Scanner (Paid)
- Malware Scanner (Paid)
- Auto Fixer for some of the tests (Paid)
- Logger & Scheduled Scans (Paid)
- Allows you to schedule scans.
- Auto fixer module
Price: $39.99 / year
Active Installations: 9,000+
Average User Ratings: 4.8/5
11. MiniOrange’s Google Authenticator (Free / Paid)
The Google Authenticator security plugin that is included with MiniOrange allows you to add Google two-factor authentication to your login screens for users of all access levels, as well as to your forms and any other user-submission fields that you may have.
It provides a variety of different authentication choices. They have developed innovative WordPress solutions, such as the Password Policy Manager plugin, and are authorities in the subject of cybersecurity.
Key of Features:
- Google Authenticator – Two-Factor (WP 2FA / OTP).
- Password Policy Manager.
- Broken Link Checker.
- Multi-Factor Authentication(MFA).
- Prevent account sharing.
- Supports standard TOTP.
- OTP over SMS, OTP Over Email.
- SMS Verification, Email Verification.
- Force Two-factor for users.
- Brute force attack prevention, IP Blocking & User login Monitoring.
- File protection & strong password.
- Supports any third-party custom SMS Gateway.
- QR Code authentication, Push Notification, Soft Token, and Security Questions(KBA).
Price: $95 / year
Active Installations: 20,000+
Average User Ratings: 4.5/5
12. WP Hide & Security Enhancer (Free / Paid)
WP-Hide has made it easier than ever to hide the paths to your WordPress core files, login page, themes, and plugins so that visitors to your website can’t see them.
This is a big improvement over Site Security because now no one will be able to tell if your website is powered by WordPress or not. In addition, it makes it easy to clean up HTML by removing all signs of WordPress.
Key of Features:
- Blocks default admin URL.
- Blocks default plugin paths.
- Broken Link Checker.
- Disable JSON REST WP RSD.
- Block any JSON REST calls.
- Clean the REST API response
- Block plugin URL
- Block wp-content URL
- Block wp-include URL
- Brute force attack prevention.
- The plugin turns a default theme to a “404 error” page for all blocked URL functionalities
- Default Admin URL from wp-login.php and wp-admin.
- Blocks any direct folder access to completely hide the structure
Price: $39 / year
Active Installations: 80,000+
Average User Ratings: 4.5/5
13. WP Cerber Security, Anti-spam & Malware Scan (Free / Paid)
WP Cerber Security provides WordPress with excellent defense against assaults by cybercriminals, spam, and malicious software. Designed to perform reliably and at breakneck speeds.
WP Cerber will prevent attackers from trying again after a specific number of times, regardless of their IP address or subnet. Because of this, it is unable to launch brute force assaults or spread brute force attacks using botnets.
Key of Features:
- Work against hacker attacks, spam, trojans, and malware.
- Mitigates brute-force attacks by limiting the number of login attempts through the login form,
- XML-RPC / REST API requests, or using auth cookies.
- A specialized anti-spam engine.
- Google reCAPTCHA to protect registration, contact, and comments forms.
- Create a Custom login URL
- Removes spam comments
- Two-Factor Authentication
- Block bots, hackers, and other suspicious activities.
- Security scanner verifies the integrity of WordPress files, plugins, and themes.
- Protects wp-login.php, wp-signup.php, and wp-register.php from attacks.
- Immediately blocks an intruder’s IP
- Default Admin URL from wp-login.php and wp-admin.
- Block access to WordPress REST API completely.
- Block access to XML-RPC
- Block access to the RSS, Atom, and RDF feeds.
- Restrict access to XML-RPC, and REST API.
Price: $29 / year
Active Installations: 200,000+
Average User Ratings: 5/5
14. NinjaFirewall WP+ (Free / Paid)
NinjaFirewall (WP Edition) is exactly what the term “Web Application Firewall” means. Even though it can be installed and set up just like a plugin, it is actually a separate firewall that is put in front of WordPress.
It lets any blog administrator use very advanced and powerful security features that are usually not available in WordPress and can only be found in specialized security apps like the Apache ModSecurity module or the PHP Suhosin extension.
Key of Features:
- Able to protect it against very large brute-force attacks
- File Guard real-time detection
- It can detect, in real-time, any access to a PHP file.
- File integrity monitoring by scanning your website hourly, twice daily or daily..
- Automatically update its security rules
- Compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- supports IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, for both public and private addresses.
- IP/Role/Country/URL/Bot-based Access Control.
- Antispam for comment and user registration forms.
- Rate limiting option to block aggressive bots, crawlers, web scrapers, and HTTP attacks.
- Syslog logging.
- Centralized Logging.
Price: $69 / year
Active Installations: 80,000+
Average User Ratings: 5/5
15. Titan Anti-spam & Security (Free / Paid)
Titan protects WordPress sites with anti-spam software, a firewall, a malware scanner, site accessibility checks, and security and threat assessments. Our security features give Titan the latest firewall rules, malware signatures, and IP addresses that are known to be dangerous. This gives you everything you need to make sure your website is safe.
Titan is an all-in-one WordPress security solution that comes with a number of extra features that can be added as add-ons. It has a simple and easy-to-understand user interface.
Key of Features:
- Able to protect it against very large brute-force attacks.
- Strong Password Requirement.
- Hide author login.
- Check the availability of any URL(Pro)
- Advanced scanning with more than 6000 signatures (Pro)
- Scan schedules – daily, monthly, and manually (Pro)
- Update malware signatures in real-time (Pro)
- Real-time IP Block List blocks (Pro)
- Using the Attack Log you can track visits and hacking attempts(Pro)
- Block intruders by IP address or create advanced rules based on a range of IP addresses, hostname, user agent, and referrer (Pro)
- Advanced protection of comment forms (Pro)
- Anti-spam is a comprehensive and transparent anti-spam protection (Pro)
- Block spam bots (Pro)
- Recover modified files.
- Delete unknown and unwanted files
- Protection brute force attacks by restricting login attempts.
Price: $55 / year
Active Installations: 100,000+
Average User Ratings: 4.5/5
16. WP fail2ban (Free)
WP fail2ban comes with three fail2ban filters. These filters are called WordPress-hard.conf, WordPress-soft.conf, and WordPress-extra.conf.
These are meant to allow a difference between immediate banning (also called “hard”) and the usual approach, which is known for being more kind (also called “soft”), as well as extra rules for special situations.
Key of Features:
- Check the availability of any URLAllow Pingbacks with XML-RPC Blocked
- Block XML-RPC Requests
- Block Countries
- Block username logins
- Filter for Empty Username Login Attempts
- Cloudflare and Proxy Servers
- Remove spam comments
- Block User Enumeration
- workarounds for Broken syslogd
Price: Free
Active Installations: 70,000+
Average User Ratings: 4.5/5
17. WebARX (Paid)
WebARX is a premium security plugin for WordPress that is renowned for its very effectively managed endpoint firewalls. These firewalls protect your website against bot attacks, vulnerable plugins, and fake traffic.
WebARX differentiates itself from other WordPress security plugins by allowing users to build their own firewall rules for their websites.
Key of Features:
- Real-time or manual backups
- Automatic virtual patching
- 0-day protection (OWASP Top 10)
- Brute-force protection
- Set up custom firewall rules
- Auto-updating for vulnerable plugins
- HTTP security header detection
- Automatic virtual patching
- Instant protection against new and known vulnerabilities
Price: $13.48 / year
Active Installations: 60,000+
Average User Ratings: 5/5
18. VaultPress (Free)
VaultPress is a service that performs real-time backups and scans for vulnerabilities in your website’s security. It was developed by Automattic, the same firm that manages millions of websites hosted on WordPress.com (and backs them all up, too!).
Key of Features:
- Real-time or manual backups
- Automatically detects
- Eliminates malware, viruses
- Blocks all spam
- Protected against hackers, accidental damage, and host outages.
Price: VaultPress is now powered by Jetpack
Active Installations: 40,000+
Average User Ratings: 4/5
19. SecuPress (Free / Paid)
A lot of really cool features are included in SecuPress. But features aren’t the only thing that matter; performance, loading speed, and memory consumption is just as important. And on a less technical note, the convenience of utilizing a well-crafted plugin that has an appealing user interface and provides a satisfying experience for the user is important.
Then, we are planning on securing a significant number of different websites. You have the ability to take part in this. Whether or not you use SecuPress, the fact that your website is protected from unauthorized access should be your top priority.
Key of Features:
- Complete WordPress security toolkit.
- Anti Brute Force login
- Blocked IPs
- Firewall
- Security alerts
- Malware Scan
- Block country by geolocation
- Protection of Security Keys
- Block visits from Bad Bots
- Vulnerable Plugins & Themes detection
- Security Reports in PDF format
- Two Factor Authentication
- SQL injection scanners are kept out as well.
- Scheduled Backup
- Scheduled Malware Scan
Price: $60 / year
Active Installations: 30,000+
Average User Ratings: 4/5
20. Security & Malware Scan by CleanTalk (Free / Paid)
CleanTalk is a platform that protects websites against spam that is hosted in the cloud. CleanTalk has developed its own spam detection algorithms that do not require users to demonstrate that they are not bots.
These methods may be found here. The work being done by the plugin is hidden from the visitors’ view, and the spam check is carried out in real-time.
Key of Features:
- Security FireWall to filter access to your site by IP, Networks, or Countries
- Web Application Security Firewall
- Security Malware scanner with AntiVirus functions
- Daily auto malware scan
- Stops brute force attacks to hack passwords(Like Fail2ban)
- Stops brute force attacks to find WordPress accounts(Like Fail2ban)
- Limit Login Attempts
- Security Protection for WordPress login form
- Security Protection for WordPress backend
- Security daily report to email
- Security audit log
- Security Real-time traffic monitor
- Checking Outbound Links
- Two Factor Authentication
- No Malware – No Google Penalties. Give your SEO boost.
- Custom wp-login URL
- Notifications of administrator users’ authorizations to your website
- Backend PHP logs
- Hide Login Default Login Page
Price: $8 / year
Active Installations: 10,000+
Average User Ratings: 4.5/5
Final Thoughts
As the administrator of a WordPress site, you are undoubtedly concerned about the security of your website and its contents.
No website is immune to cybercrime, which is why installing the right security plugins can help protect your site from attack.
Luckily, there are many plugins available that can help protect your site from being hacked or stolen.
In this article, we have compiled a list of the 20 best security plugins for WordPress sites.
We hope that this information will help you to make informed decisions when choosing which plugin to install on your site.
If you have any questions or suggestions about our top 20 security plugins for WordPress sites, please let us know in the comments below!