9 Best WordPress Popular Posts Plugins 2022 (Mostly Free)

Are you searching for the best WordPress popular posts plugins that will help you display the most popular posts on your site? If so, this article is for you. 

Popular posts can be categorized as the posts that are most clicked, viewed, or commented on. Displaying such posts can have positive impacts on your site. So, WordPress popular posts plugins enable you to show popular content on the homepage, blog post, sidebar, or anywhere you like.

Thus, in this article, we’ve collected nine of the best WordPress popular post plugins for you.

Let’s begin by knowing what actually is a WordPress popular posts plugin and why you need it. 

What is a WordPress Popular Posts Plugin, and Why Do You Need It? 

WordPress popular posts plugin is simply a plugin that lets you display a list of the popular posts on your WordPress site. To be precise, it lets you highlight your site’s best content. When you’re able to display the most popular posts on your site, it becomes easy for your new audience to find the best content from you.

Next, it creates an opportunity for you to display some of your pillar posts on your homepage or elsewhere. Showcasing your best posts can also convert new visitors into the regular audience, increasing your website’s traffic.  

WordPress doesn’t have any built-in features for displaying the popular posts on your site. However, there are many WordPress popular posts plugins that you can install on your site.

And with that said, here’s the list of the best WordPress popular posts plugins which are mostly free. 


9 Best WordPress Popular Posts Plugins  

1. WordPress Popular Posts      

WordPress Popular Posts Plugin

WordPress Popular Posts is one of the crowd’s favorite plugins, with over 200 million active installations. It’s a highly customizable plugin that enables you to show popular posts using different conditions.

You can order the popular posts by comments, views, or average views per day. Likewise, you can view how your popular posts perform from the admin dashboards.

It also allows setting a time range for popular posts listing so that the most popular posts for a given time range, like the last 24 hours, last 30 days, etc., are displayed as popular. Meanwhile, the plugin includes some WordPress themes that you can use to style your popular posts list. 

Key Features: 

  • Multi-widget capability 
  • Custom post-type support 
  • Advanced caching 
  • Supports shortcode 
  • Allows to use your own layout 

Price: Free 


2. Top 10 – Popular Posts Plugin for WordPress     

Top 10 WordPress Popular Posts Plugin

Top 10 is a WordPress popular posts plugin that counts the number of page views of your posts, pages, or any custom post types and displays the most popular ones. It supports thumbnails, widgets, shortcodes, custom post types, and CSS styles.

Further, it also provides an option for displaying page view counts. That means you can add two widgets, one to display a list of popular posts and another to display page view counts across all your blog posts.  

Also, the built-in caching system is available in the plugin, which helps in reducing server load time by caching your popular posts. Meanwhile, the plugin is also compatible with other popular caching plugins.  

Key Features: 

  • Powerful and fully extendable API 
  • Supports Gutenberg editor  
  • Easy-to-use admin interface 
  • Export/import interface for count tables 
  • GDPR compliant 

Price: Free 


3. Jetpack     

Jetpack

If you’ve already spent some time in WordPress, you must have heard about Jetpack – the most popular WordPress plugin for about everything. Developed by WordPress experts themselves the plugin is fully secured, has a top-class performance, and offers many design tools.

And out of hundreds of features, the plugin provides popular post features in the form of Top Posts & Pages Widget. You can add the widget of popular content to your sidebar, footer, or both.

Besides, you can choose up to 10 posts or pages to show as the most popular. Some premium features, like brute force protection, downtime, and uptime monitoring, are all free with Jetpack. 

Key Features: 

  • Manages migration to a new host 
  • Automatically performs malware and security scans 
  • Anti-spam features powered by Akismet 
  • Offers two-factor authentication for secure login 
  • Auto update for plugins 

Price: Free  


4. Display Posts     

Display Posts

Display Posts is a simple and easy-to-use WordPress popular posts plugin that allows you to list popular posts on your website. You can simply add the shortcode in the editor and display a list of the most recent or popular posts. In addition, you can also filter to show the posts within a certain category.  

It displays the popular posts in a column-based grid with some styling. Likewise, you can choose popular content based on the number of comments and social shares. Moreover, you can also include thumbnails, excerpts, query parameters like authors, and so on.  

Key Features: 

  • Powerful customization options for developers 
  • Styling option of the image in the post listing 
  • Detail tutorials available 
  • Offers multiple extensions like co-authors plus addon 
  • Template parts to match your existing theme styling 

Price: Free  


5. MonsterInsights   

MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights, best known for the Google Analytics plugin, is also best for displaying popular posts on your WordPress site. It provides you with the analytics and stats to grow your audience and boost your traffic and sales.

You can connect Google Analytics to your WordPress site within a few clicks and get all the essential insights of your site from the dashboard. It shows you which blog post or section of your site is most popular through popular post tracking.

Author tracking is another essential feature of the plugin that lets you discover the most popular author on your site. In addition, user journeys, affiliate link tracking, and events tracking are also available.  

Key Features: 

  • Enhanced eCommerce tracking 
  • Tracks SEO score 
  • Allows to add Google Analytics to WordPress multisite 
  • Vimeo Google Analytics 
  • Provides actionable tips to improve engagement 

Price: Free or $199/year 


6. Recent Posts Widget Extended   

Recent Posts Widget Extended

Recent Posts Widget Extended allows you to enable an advanced, flexible, and custom recent post that you can display on your site using a shortcode or widget. You can display a list of recent posts with an excerpt, post date, and thumbnail. Similarly, you can also display those posts using taxonomies, post types, and more. 

At the same time, it provides a customization option for the size and alignment of the thumbnails. Also, you can choose the length of the excerpt. For further customization, it gives the opportunity of using custom HTML and CSS. 

Key Features: 

  • Display posts by date, comment count, or random 
  • Display posts from all, specific, or multiple categories or tag 
  • Allows to enable read more tag 
  • Filter available for developer 
  • Easily translate to your language 

Price: Free 


7. PostX    

PostX WordPress Popular Posts Plugin

PostX is a Gutenberg block plugin for creating custom news, magazine, personal blogs, and other websites. It’s mostly popular for creating news magazine sites and is also known as a news plugin. However, it’s a multi-functional plugin with all the features required for creating blogs, news, and magazine sites.  

One of the attractive features of the plugin is Popular Posts, using which you can display the most popular posts with more view count from your site. Likewise, it offers multiple criteria for sorting the popular posts; you can sort the posts by counting the views of one, seven, or thirty days and display them on your site as the most popular.  

Key Features: 

  • Over 38 live editable Gutenberg block 
  • Advanced query builder  
  • Allows to add related posts on single posts, pages, or on the sidebar 
  • Customizable and responsive home page slider 
  • Numerous add-ons available to extend features 

Price: Free or $49/year 


8. Trending    

Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget

Trending is another free WordPress popular posts plugin that allows you to display the most popular post on your blog as per its views or comments. It also lets you display the popular post on a page using a shortcode or in a sidebar using the widget. In addition, you can display the popular posts in a grid block, slider, carousel, or as a widget.  

Since the plugin is made with WordPress standards, it has no compatibility issues. Also, it works seamlessly with the Gutenberg shortcode block. Thus, it’s a great WordPress post plugin to attract your site’s visitors.  

Key Features: 

  • Supports majority of the page builders 
  • Fully responsive 
  • 20 pre-defined stunning and cool designs 
  • Multilanguage support 
  • WordPress default post support 

Price: Free or $149/year 


9. Relevant   

Relevant

Lastly, we have Relevant on our list of the best WordPress popular posts plugins. It comes with multiple features, including shortcodes for popular posts. Besides popular posts, it allows you to display the latest, related, and featured posts on your WordPress site. 

You can choose from two positions for popular posts: before content and after content. Similarly, it lets you set a custom size for featured images and define the category to display the latest posts. Meanwhile, you can mark any post or page as featured and define its content and section width.  

Key Features: 

  • Allows to set a default image for missing post image 
  • Changing featured posts by reloading 
  • Compatible with the latest WordPress version 
  • Allows to display additional information for popular posts, like the number of views 
  • Detailed documentation and videos 

Price: Free  


Wrapping It Up! 

That’s all on the best WordPress popular posts plugins for now. We’re sure that you can confidently pick a suitable WordPress post plugin for your site from the list above.  

Displaying the most popular posts from your site will engage the audience and improve the SEO ranking of your site. It’s because, through popular posts, you’re giving your audience what they are looking for.  

Now that you have a list of the best WordPress popular posts plugins, why not explore our article on the best keyword research tools for SEO

For more such articles, visit our blog page. You can also follow us on our social media pages: Twitter and Facebook, and get updates on every new blog post. 

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