Best bad bots plugins for WordPress
The most popular bad bots plugins for WordPress in November 2026, in WordPress.org’s own popular order, which follows active installs. Bot Traffic Shield leads with 900+ active installs, ahead of DevDome Bot Protection (200+) and ShieldUp (80+). All 5 plugins tagged “bad bots” are below, with figures from WordPress.org that update every day.
Installs aren’t everything: a recent release, a “Tested up to” that matches the current WordPress, and support threads that get resolved show a plugin is looked after. Open any plugin for its downloads, rank history and alternatives.
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Top 5 bad bots plugins
- 1.
Bot Traffic ShieldThe most installed bad bots plugin, with 900+ active installs. Rated 5.0 from 5 reviews, updated 1 week ago.
- 2.
DevDome Bot Protection200+ active installs. Only 1 review so far, updated 3 weeks ago.
- 3.
ShieldUp80+ active installs. Only 3 reviews so far, last updated 1 year ago. Tested only up to WordPress 6.7.11.
- 4.
crawler-hunter10+ active installs. Only 2 reviews so far, last updated 1 year ago. Tested only up to WordPress 6.8.12.
- 5.
Block old browser versions and suspicious browsersFewer than 10 active installs. No reviews yet, updated 3 weeks ago.
All 5 plugins tagged “bad bots”
Bot Traffic Shield
Up in the last 7 days:84#7,142by Delower Hossain13 days ago
A powerful and user-friendly plugin to block AI crawlers and malicious data scraper bots, protecting your content and server resources.
- Installs
- 900+
- Rating
- 5.0(5)
- Downloads
- 53/day
DevDome Bot Protection
Up in the last 7 days:132#11,958by DevDome23 days ago
Block bad bots, control AI crawlers and review bot traffic with local detection and configurable rules, without CAPTCHAs.
- Installs
- 200+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 76/day
ShieldUp
Up in the last 7 days:96#18,056by shieldup2 years ago
ShieldUp helps you to tackle bad bots, scrapers, hackers, enhancing website security and optimizing performance for a seamless user experience.
- Installs
- 80+
- Rating
- 5.0(3)
- Downloads
- 0/day
crawler-hunter
Down in the last 7 days:92#34,170by naimgr831 year ago
It is a simple but effective plugin. Stops spam bots by checking browser content. You can also add an ip address to the blacklist.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 4.5(2)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Block old browser versions and suspicious browsers
Down in the last 7 days:1,891#67,703by hupe1322 days ago
With the help of WhatIsMyBrowser the plugin detects old and bad browsers and denies them access. A special robots.txt denies crawling by bad bots.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day