WP Beacon

Catalog over time

Active vs removed plugins across wordpress.org's history — 66,262 active, 49,850 removed today.

Active vs removed catalog

Cumulative: of every plugin ever published (that we track), how many remain active (blue) vs have been removed (red). Band top = total ever created.

116k87k58k29k0200420062008201020122014201620182020202220242026

Active plugins & lifespan of removed ones

The active catalog next to how long removed plugins survived (closure date − creation date). 57% of removed plugins lasted 5+ years before closing (largely the 2018 purge of long-abandoned plugins); only 15% closed within their first year.

66k50k33k17k0Active<1mo1–3mo3–6mo6–12mo1–2y2–3y3–5y5–10y10y+

Plugins removed per month

Full closure history, 2004–2026. The 2018 spike is wordpress.org's mass guideline-enforcement purge (14,276 closures that year).

3k2k1k71302018 purge2004-122006-102008-042009-082010-122012-042013-082014-122016-042017-082018-122020-042021-082022-122024-042025-08

Plugins added per year

Now reconstructable for removed plugins too — their added date was recovered from the first SVN revision, which wordpress.org's API drops once a plugin closes.

9k6k4k2k0200420062008201020122014201620182020202220242026

Counts cover the ~116,112 plugins WP Beacon tracks. Removal dates come from wordpress.org; creation dates from SVN svn log -r1. See About for data sources.