We’ve got the volume. We’ve got the tools. Now we need the audacity.

I went through every single plugin added to WordPress.org in 2025. All 6,162 of them. Multiple passes. Categorized, analyzed, hunted for patterns.

Let me be clear: I didn’t do this manually. That would be insane. Claude did the heavy lifting—running queries, counting patterns, surfacing outliers while I directed the search. What would have taken weeks of mind-numbing spreadsheet work happened in an afternoon.

This post exists because of AI. That’s not a disclaimer—it’s the whole point. The same tools that let me analyze 6,162 plugins are the tools that could let anyone build something new for WordPress. More on that later.

But first, let me show you what we found.

And look—there’s some genuinely wild stuff in here. A maze generator. Bugs that crawl across your screen. An AI sommelier that recommends wine pairings. Someone built a basketball scorebook in WordPress. I love these people.

But I also found 30 different plugins that generate LLMs.txt files. Thirty. For a text file.

I found 69 Table of Contents plugins. Sixty-nine ways to make a table of contents.

And I realized: we’re not lacking activity. We’re lacking audacity.

Here’s the thing though—that’s fixable. And I think 2026 could be the year we fix it.

First, Let’s Look at What We Built

The raw numbers are actually impressive:

Month	Plugins
January	471
February	378
March	401
April	437
May	540
June	396
July	475
August	593
September	587
October	558
November	590
December	736

December 2025 hit 736 new plugins. That’s 24 per day. People are building. The ecosystem is alive.

But alive and thriving are different things. Let me show you what I mean.

The Derivative Problem (And Why It’s Not Actually Hopeless)

Here’s the stat that made me sit back: 1,513 plugins—25% of everything submitted—have “for” in the name. They’re extensions of extensions.

Pattern	Count
“for WooCommerce”	685
“for Elementor”	125
“for Contact Form 7”	38
“Addon” or “Add-on”	84
“Integration”	115

Now, some of this makes sense. WooCommerce needs regional payment gateways. Elementor users need widgets. I’m not saying extensions are bad.

But when a quarter of all new plugins are explicitly derivative… that’s a symptom. It means we’ve gotten comfortable extending other people’s ideas instead of having our own.

The opportunity: Every one of those derivative plugins represents a developer who could build something original. They have the skills. They’re just aiming small.

The Hall of Duplication (a.k.a. “We Can Stop Now”)

Want to see where we collectively spun our wheels?

Problem	Plugins in 2025	My Reaction
Table of Contents	69	We’re good. We have enough.
Image Optimization	48	WebP exists. We solved this.
LLMs.txt Generation	30	IT’S A TEXT FILE, FRIENDS
Floating WhatsApp Buttons	26	Please stop
SMTP Configuration	24	wp_mail() is right there
Coming Soon Pages	23	It’s 2025 why
Duplicate Post	17	Core should just do this

I’m not dunking on the developers here. Everyone’s trying to ship something, build a business, solve a problem they personally had. I get it.

But imagine if even half the energy that went into Table of Contents plugin #47 went into something that doesn’t exist yet.

The opportunity: All these solved problems? They’re off the table now. Anyone looking for white space just has to look at what we haven’t built 69 versions of.

The AI Gold Rush (And What We Missed)

831 AI plugins in 2025. That sounds exciting until you look closer.

Most of them are the same plugin with different branding:

• ChatGPT wrapper for content → ship it
• AI chatbot for support → ship it
• AI alt text generator → ship it
• AI product descriptions → ship it

I get why this happened. AI is hot. APIs are accessible. You can build an MVP in a weekend. But we ended up with 831 variations of “call OpenAI, display result.”

What I wish we’d built instead:

• AI that learns your writing voice and helps you sound more like yourself, not less
• AI that analyzes what’s actually working on your site and suggests what to write next
• AI that makes the block editor smarter—predicting what you want, offering relevant blocks
• AI that helps you understand your audience instead of just generating content for them

A few plugins actually went there:

VerifyAI – Fact Checker — Uses AI for something meaningful: checking if your content is accurate.

Pinpointed AI Sommelier — AI wine recommendations. Stupidly specific and I love it.

CleanMod — AI comment moderation that actually thinks about context.

The opportunity: We’ve barely scratched what AI can do for WordPress. The API wrapper era is over. The “AI that actually helps” era is wide open.

The Creator Tools Gap (This One Hurts)

I specifically looked for tools that help creators—writers, musicians, artists, educators. The people WordPress was made for.

Category	Count	What I Found
LMS/Course	63	Extensions of TutorLMS, LearnPress, etc.
Podcast/Audio	29	Basic players
Portfolio/Gallery	116	Grids. Lightboxes. That’s it.
Writing tools	~40	Almost all AI replacement, not assistance

Here’s what kills me about the writing tools: they’re almost entirely “let AI write FOR you.” Where are the tools that help writers write better?

Where’s the plugin for serialized fiction—chapter management, reader subscriptions, “previously on” recaps?

Where’s the musician’s plugin that handles audio embeds, lyrics, setlists, tour dates, merch integration—all in one cohesive experience?

Where’s the portfolio plugin that lets artists tell the story of their work instead of just displaying it in a grid?

The opportunity: Creators are underserved. They’re on WordPress because it’s flexible, but we’re not building tools that understand how they actually work.

Modern WordPress Is Being Ignored

WordPress shipped the Interactivity API. It’s genuinely powerful—reactive, JavaScript-driven interactions with a WordPress-native approach.

How many plugins are using it?

Maybe one.

I found 15 plugins with “interactive” in the name. Fourteen are interactive maps or hotspot images (which… fine, but that’s not new). Only Interactions seems to actually push the API forward.

Same story everywhere:

• Headless WordPress connectors? Almost none
• Block development tools? Zero scaffolding helpers
• Full Site Editing utilities? Minimal

We’re building like it’s 2018 when the platform has moved to 2025.

The opportunity: First-mover advantage is still available. The modern WordPress toolkit is powerful and almost nobody’s using it. Someone who builds great Interactivity API plugins right now owns that space.

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We Have 685 WooCommerce Plugins and 10 Community Plugins

That ratio tells you everything about where the money is—and where it isn’t.

Category	Count
WooCommerce extensions	685
Payment gateways	286
Community/Forum plugins	10
Nonprofit/Donation	~10
Collaboration tools	~20

Commerce dominates because commerce pays. I’m not naive about that.

But WordPress started as a way for people to connect and share ideas. Somewhere along the way, we decided it was primarily a storefront.

The opportunity: Community features are underbuilt. Collaboration is underbuilt. Anyone building social, community-driven, or nonprofit-focused tools has almost no competition.

The Plugins That Made Me Genuinely Excited

Okay, enough about problems. Here’s what gave me hope—the plugins that prove we can build interesting things:

Commandify — A command palette for WordPress. Hit a shortcut, search everything, take actions. Like Spotlight or Raycast but for your site. THIS is UX innovation.

Laoutaris Maze Generator — Generate mazes. In WordPress. No practical purpose. Pure joy.

Bug Animation — Bugs crawling across your website. Chaotic. Weird. I respect it immensely.

Scratch Card AI — Interactive scratch cards for promotions, reveals, gamification. Fun as a feature.

Fireworks Celebration — Particle effects. Confetti. Celebration. Why shouldn’t websites be joyful?

Interactions — Actually using the Interactivity API to build reactive experiences. Someone’s paying attention.

GreenMetrics — Track your website’s carbon footprint. Sustainability meets WordPress.

Site Notes — Visual feedback directly on your site. Real collaboration innovation.

Listen to This Article as a Podcast — Rethinks content consumption entirely. Not just a player—a transformation.

These exist. They got through review. They’re proof that weird, ambitious, delightful plugins can ship.

They’re just buried under 6,150 checkout field editors.

What Makes 2026 Different?

Here’s why I’m optimistic despite everything I just showed you:

1. AI tools have changed who can build.

This article is proof. I just analyzed 6,162 plugins in an afternoon. Without Claude, this post doesn’t exist—I’m not sitting here manually categorizing thousands of plugin names in a spreadsheet. No one would.

The same thing applies to building plugins. I’ve spent the last year shipping WordPress blocks with Claude as my collaborator. Complex interactive features. Production-ready code. Things that would have taken me weeks now take hours. Things I couldn’t build at all, I can build now.

The barrier to entry hasn’t just lowered—it’s collapsed. If you have ideas but thought you couldn’t execute them? That excuse is gone. AI doesn’t replace your creativity; it removes the friction between your ideas and shipping them.

2. The duplication has mapped the white space.

We now know exactly what WordPress has too much of. That’s actually useful! If you’re looking for what to build, start with what we haven’t built 69 versions of.

3. Modern WordPress is genuinely good.

The block editor is mature. The Interactivity API is powerful. Full Site Editing works. The platform is ready for ambitious plugins—the ecosystem just hasn’t caught up yet.

4. The community is hungry for something different.

Every time someone ships something weird and wonderful, it gets attention. People are craving plugins that surprise them. The appetite is there.

A Challenge for 2026

If you’re reading this and you build WordPress plugins—or you’ve thought about it—here’s my challenge:

Build something that doesn’t exist yet.

Not another Table of Contents plugin. Not another AI content generator. Not another “for WooCommerce” addon.

Build something weird. Build something that makes people smile. Build something that solves a problem nobody else noticed. Build something that pushes WordPress into territory it’s never been.

And use AI to help you do it. Seriously. I couldn’t have written this post without it. I couldn’t build half the plugins I ship without it. If you’ve got ideas but you’re stuck on execution, you’re out of excuses. Claude, GPT, whatever—these tools turn “I wish someone would build…” into “I built this.”

Some specific gaps I’d love to see filled:

• Creator-focused plugins for writers, musicians, artists
• Interactivity API showcases that prove what’s possible
• Weird delightful things that have no business existing but make the web more fun

The WordPress plugin directory doesn’t need more volume. It needs more vision.

Let’s Make Cool Shit

6,162 plugins in 2025. A lot of duplication. A lot of playing it safe. But also: maze generators and bug animations and AI sommeliers.

The weird stuff exists. It’s just rare.

Let’s make it less rare.

2026 is wide open. The tools are better than ever. The white space is clearly mapped. And WordPress—for all its quirks—is still the platform where one person with a good idea can ship something to millions of sites.

That’s not nothing. That’s actually kind of amazing.

So let’s stop building the 70th Table of Contents plugin and start building things that don’t exist yet.

I’ll see you in the directory.

What’s the plugin you wish existed? What would you build if you knew it would work? Hit me up—I want to hear the weird ideas. Those are the best ones.

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Methodology: All 6,162 plugins extracted from WordPress.org with 2025 “added” dates. Analysis done with Claude—pattern matching, categorization, multiple passes through the data to find outliers. The whole analysis took an afternoon, not weeks. That’s the point. AI makes this kind of deep dive possible for anyone willing to ask the right questions.