PLUGIN DIRECTORY CENSUS · A SERIES BY HAFENSTUDIOS

The WordPress plugin directory, fully counted.

Every issue captures the entire listed directory through the public wordpress.org API, compares it with every slug ever issued, and publishes raw data, scripts and checksums. The analysis stays strictly with what the data actually supports.

Issue 01/2026 · Reference date · 70,909 listed plugins

58.4%of listed plugins had gone more than a year without a release
3.7 to 7.8%of all active installs are theirs, given as a range between the lower and upper bound
42.8%of all slugs ever issued are not listed today
Read census issue 1 Check my own plugins

Four ways in

The map

466 plugins with 100,000+ installs as bubbles, by name and with a profile page per plugin. Filter by tag, colour by category, age or rating.

Still image of the bubble map: plugins with 100,000+ installs on a dark background, size by installation band, colour by category To the map →All plugin profiles →

Your plugins

Enter slugs, one per line: install range, last release, status against the threshold, and a comparison with each slug's own size group. The result is a shareable link.

akismet 5,000,000 to 5,999,999 9 days ago released within the threshold

To the check tool →

The report

13 sections, 8 figures, 12 tables: result, method, limits, conflict of interest, and a self-check with curl anyone can rerun.

  1. How many plugins had no release for more than a year?
  2. How precise is active_installs?
  3. How many plugins are in the directory?
  4. Where does the silence sit?
  5. Silent by category
To the report →

Data and scripts

Aggregates as JSON, 70,909 listed slugs as TSV, 53,061 slugs not listed on the reference date as TXT, and three reproducible scripts. CC BY 4.0, every file with a checksum.

census-01-2026.json (108 KB)
census-slugs.tsv (2.4 MB)
census-plugins-01-2026.json (717 KB)
census-nicht-gelistet-01-2026.txt (1,056 KB)
SHA-256 57f06ac50b531486…

To the files →

Issues

01/2026

Reference date , version 1.2 (preprint). Published . Report, map, check tool, raw data and scripts. To issue 01/2026

02/2026

Data collection in the last week of November 2026, the date will be announced beforehand. Newly measured: movement between reference dates, which slugs vanished, and what reason the API states. Thresholds, ranges and conventions stay the same, so the issues remain comparable.

Cite and correct

Horst Wenzel, hafenstudios: Plugin Directory Census 01/2026, reference date , version 1.2, https://hafenstudios.com/census/01-2026/, SHA-256 of the aggregate file 57f06ac50b531486bd67ab9c52468f06d31ba84b6223e3e52101dd650b5e923f

Corrections and objections to moin@hafenstudios.com. A substantiated correction leads to a new version with an entry in the version history.

Horst Wenzel

Horst Wenzel
Horst Wenzel builds WordPress plugins in Hamburg (hafenstudios) and measures the directory they live in. Questions and corrections: moin@hafenstudios.com.