Best profiling plugins for WordPress
The most popular profiling plugins for WordPress in November 2026, in WordPress.org’s own popular order, which follows active installs. Debug Bar Slow Actions leads with 100+ active installs, ahead of DebugHawk (10+) and Debugger (10+). All 18 plugins tagged “profiling” 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.
Research this niche or see all plugins.
Top 10 profiling plugins
- 1.
Debug Bar Slow ActionsThe most installed profiling plugin, with 100+ active installs. Rated 4.8 from 15 reviews, last updated 8 years ago. Tested only up to WordPress 4.9.35.
- 2.
DebugHawk10+ active installs. Only 1 review so far, updated 4 days ago.
- 3.
Debugger10+ active installs. Only 2 reviews so far, last updated 13 years ago. Tested only up to WordPress 3.6.1.
- 4.
WP XHProf Profiler10+ active installs. Only 1 review so far, last updated 14 years ago. Tested only up to WordPress 3.3.2.
- 5.
Simple Debug10+ active installs. Only 2 reviews so far, last updated 13 years ago. Tested only up to WordPress 3.5.2.
- 6.
WPDB Profiling10+ active installs. No reviews yet, last updated 16 years ago. Tested only up to WordPress 2.9.2.
- 7.
MySQL Profiler10+ active installs. Rated 4.2 from 5 reviews, last updated 14 years ago. Tested only up to WordPress 3.3.2.
- 8.
HookTraceFewer than 10 active installs. Only 1 review so far, updated 9 months ago. Tested only up to WordPress 6.9.11.
- 9.
PerfbaseFewer than 10 active installs. No reviews yet, updated 5 months ago.
- 10.
digitalDot Diagnostics Export for Query MonitorFewer than 10 active installs. No reviews yet, updated 3 weeks ago.
All 18 plugins tagged “profiling”
Debug Bar Slow Actions
Down in the last 7 days:200#13,283by Konstantin Kovshenin8 years ago
Easily find out which actions and filters are the slowest during a page load.
- Installs
- 100+
- Rating
- 4.8(15)
- Downloads
- 210/day
DebugHawk
Down in the last 7 days:2,699#32,797by A5hleyRich4 days ago
Performance monitoring built specifically for WordPress. Track Core Web Vitals, slow database queries, external API calls and cache effectiveness.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Debugger
Up in the last 7 days:252#34,370by Modern Tribe, Inc.13 years ago
You can use this plugin to manually log data or to capture logging on WordPress actions. You can capture load time, memory, backrace, data dumps, urls …
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 4.5(2)
- Downloads
- 0/day
WP XHProf Profiler
Down in the last 7 days:1,062#34,733by Artberri15 years ago
Adds PHP profiling support to your Wordpress using Facebook's XHProf Profiler.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Simple Debug
Up in the last 7 days:8,370#36,038by ChrisHurst14 years ago
Analyzes WordPress website performance, helps to locate slow function hooks.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 3.0(2)
- Downloads
- 0/day
WPDB Profiling
#42,996by tierrainnovation17 years ago
This plugin will give you the total number of queries to the db per page, as well as the total time it took to render those queries out to the page.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
MySQL Profiler
Down in the last 7 days:4,967#48,500by tombenner14 years ago
Displays a list of each page's SQL queries and the functions calling them that can be searched and sorted by time, type, etc.
- Installs
- 10+
- Rating
- 4.2(5)
- Downloads
- 1/day
HookTrace
#50,336by SmilingSyntax9 months ago
Cross-Plugin Debug & Trace Recorder - Records and visualizes hook execution order for WordPress developers.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Perfbase
#53,420by Perfbase5 months ago
WordPress integration for the Perfbase APM platform.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
digitalDot Diagnostics Export for Query Monitor
Up in the last 7 days:6,691#55,223by digitalDot Servicios Informáticos25 days ago
Export performance diagnostics from Query Monitor into private log files and locally prepared ZIP packages for manual analysis.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 3/day
CodeTelemetryLab Admin Performance Inspector
Up in the last 7 days:1,470#66,105by codetelemetrylab6 months ago
Profile your WordPress admin performance. Identify slow plugins, database queries, hook execution times, and memory usage from one clean dashboard.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- 5.0(1)
- Downloads
- 0/day
Qaiyo Web Performance Surgeon
Up in the last 7 days:3,666#66,266by qaiyo1 month ago
Diagnose what actually slows your site down — file- and function-level attribution of SQL, hooks, HTTP and assets, measured on a real visitor render.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 6/day
liaison site health monitor
#68,096by Liaison2 months ago
Developer-focused WordPress diagnostic plugin using WordPress core SAVEQUERIES for site health metrics and slow query profiling.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day
Sysadmin Total Suite
Down in the last 7 days:16,347#69,383by ricardomorales1 month ago
Core integrity, vulnerability audit, unused media cleanup, disk usage, profiling, users, WPO and AI bot blocking in one admin panel.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 4/day
Block Weight Inspector
#69,760by devmarvs9 months ago
See which blocks load which CSS/JS assets on a page and estimate their weight.
- Installs
- <10
- Rating
- –
- Downloads
- 0/day