Easy Footnotes lets you quickly and easily add footnotes throughout your WordPress posts using a simple shortcode in the text editor.
As of April 2026, Easy Footnotes is a WordPress read plugin with 8.0K+ active installations and a 4.8/5 rating from 33 reviews. It has been downloaded 149K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 3.0.1+ and PHP false+. Available on WordPress.org since 2014. Downloads are up 36% this week. Top alternative: Read More Excerpt Link.
Easy Footnotes lets you add footnotes throughout your WordPress posts by using the shortcode [efn_note]Footnote content.[/efn_note]. Easy Footnotes will automatically add the number of the footnote where the shortcode was entered and add the full footnote text to the bottom of your post in an ordered list with a corresponding number.
Hovering the footnote label will show the user the full text of the footnote using the jQuery Qtip2 plugin. Clicking on the footnote label will take the user down the page to the corresponding footnote at the bottom of the WordPress post. Each footnote at the bottom of the post has a icon that can be clicked to return to that particular footnote within the post copy.
That’s all it takes to start adding footnotes to your WordPress blog!
Easy Footnotes is an excellent plugin that delivers on its promise of simplicity and speed. It allows for effortless insertion of footnotes, automatically numbering them and appending them to the end of posts. The hover-over functionality enhances user experience by displaying footnote content without navigating away from the main text. However, a notable limitation is the inability to position footnotes elsewhere within a post. Introducing a shortcode, such as [efn_notes], to specify footnote placement would significantly enhance its versatility.
The Easy Footnotes plug-in is simple and easy to use. I use it to add sub-context, references, and any other information that is relevant to the content but would otherwise disrupt the flow of the post.
As simple as good plugin. Nothing wore required. Thank you to the developers.
This plugin came in extremely handy when I was recently marking up a long post with art, text and footnotes for my site on Chris Marker. I can verify as well that it even works within the now quite popular Elementor visual builder. I cannot say for sure yet but the paragraphs that contain EFN shortcodes seem to load more slowly than regular paragraphs; perhaps there is some code optimization in order, but I will leave that to your developers. I would also like to recommend some additional CSS for those who would like a numerical marker, already small due to the sup tag, to stand out more, by adding, for example:
sup {
top: -.5em;
background: linen;
padding: 6px;
border-radius: 4px;
border: 1px #ccc solid;
}
This will give the touch/click target a bit more room due to the padding (and therefore better UX), and visually make the footnote stand out in a pretty professional manner. Choose your own colors. Once again, excellent plugin, many thanks for saving the day!
The [efn_note] tags should be in colour and bold to make them easier to find in the text. Thank you very much for this nice work.
| WordPress | 3.0.1+ requiredTested up to 6.8.5 |
| PHP | false+ required |
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.