WP Social Widget vs Friends (2026)
Detailed side-by-side comparison of two WordPress plugins, based on real-time data from WordPress.org.
Quick Verdict
As of April 2026, Friends has a higher user rating (5/5 from 6 reviews) while WP Social Widget leads in active installations (4.0K+ vs 1.0K+). Both are free WordPress plugins. WP Social Widget has accumulated 122K+ total downloads while Friends has 82K+.
Detailed Comparison
| Metric | WP Social Widget | Friends | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.7/5 | ► | 5/5 |
| Total Reviews | 11 | ◄ | 6 |
| Active Installs | 4.0K+ | ◄ | 1.0K+ |
| Total Downloads | 122K+ | ◄ | 82K+ |
| Support Resolution | N/A | 0% | |
| Last Updated | 10 months ago | ► | 3 days ago |
| First Released | 2015 | 2018 | |
| Age | 11 years | 8 years | |
| WP Requires | 2.8+ | false+ | |
| PHP Requires | false+ | 7.4+ | |
| Business Model | Free | Free | |
| Latest Version | 2.3.1 | 4.0.4 |
Rating Breakdown
WP Social Widget
Friends
Download Trends
Over the past 30 days, WP Social Widget averaged approximately 9 daily downloads while Friends averaged 175.
Recent Reviews
WP Social Widget Reviews
good but old
Its a good plugin I like it. simple but the logos are the old versions. There are no different types of Facebook logos, instagram and youtube are old logos, and when you change colors it will not show
Simple, clean, social icons
I love these social icons on my landing page. They’re simple and elegant. Just what I was looking for.
conflict with color box
nice view of the social icon but your plugin is in conflict with de color box #hexa of wordpress clic for the conflict
Friends Reviews
I love it, what a very cool plugin!
Perhaps something like this should be enabled by default on all WordPress plugins, it really hits home… the idea is brilliant!
Excellent!
This is really an excellent app. It’s possible to bridge to Bluesky with it and it’s really easy to reblog etc. I really like the email alerts. The only difficulty is finding sites to follow. A list o
You can use to bridge to BlueSky too!
I decided to try to use this to bridge my self-hosted ActivityPub-enabled WordPress blog to BlueSky as well, using the opt-in BridgyFed service which connects BlueSky to the Federation. I found a prob
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Comparison and analysis by PluginSift.