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.

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.

How recently active plugins were updated

The 67,506 active plugins by time since their last release (fresh → stale). 62% haven't been updated in over a year, 42% not in 5+ years, and 22% not in 10+ years — the abandoned-but-still-listed surface that ownership-transfer takeovers target.

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).

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.

Counts cover the ~117,382 plugins WP Beacon tracks. Removal dates come from wordpress.org; creation dates from SVN svn log -r1. See About for data sources.