The Rivale Diff is Rivale’s monthly report on the WordPress plugin market. Rivale works through what the public WordPress.org directory shows next to the intelligence it gathers on its own, so several measures in the Diff exist in no other report.
What you’ll find in this new issue
Issue 2 covers September 2026 (against August 2026). A few interesting stats from it:
- In the top 12,500, 4,575 plugins had no update in a year. 3,928 of the 4,575 had more downloads per day in September than in August.
- 45.7% of the top 12,500 plugins with the ai tag released an update in September. Across all top 12,500 plugins, 21.1% did.
- Elementor and Yoast SEO gained the most downloads in September. Akismet lost the most, with 81% fewer downloads per day than in August.
- 226.7M downloads across the top 12,500 plugins in September, 1.0% more per day than in August.
- 3,174 new plugins joined the directory in September. By 30 September, two were in the top 12,500.
Among the plugins with no update in a year, Regenerate Thumbnails gained the most downloads per day. It has a million installs and was last updated in August 2025. The issue names the others. It also names the plugin with 100,000 installs whose WordPress.org listing was closed on 9 September, and the plugin that lost 14 reviews.
Read Issue 2 to access all of this data and enjoy even more!