A super light-weight live search plugin that utilizes the WP REST API.
As of April 2026, WP Live Search is a WordPress search plugin with 30 active installations and a 4.7/5 rating from 3 reviews. It has been downloaded 7.2K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 3.5.1+ and PHP false+. Available on WordPress.org since 2015. Last updated 10 years ago — may have compatibility concerns. Top alternative: Ivory Search – WordPress Search Plugin.
WP Live Search (beta) is a search plugin for WordPress that returns results as the user types for what they are looking. It currently supports posts, pages, post types, including multiple post types, and design modes.
This is very much a working prototype, so please log any issues you find on the Github repo below.
https://github.com/bearded-avenger/wp-live-search
Here’s some documentation.
http://bearded-avenger.github.io/wp-live-search/
Add the shortcode [wp_live_search] to a page or something. There’s a few shortcode attributes that you can use, and are as follows:
type=””
Your choices are posts or pages. Defaults to posts. You can also pass type,type to search multiple post types. For example type=”recipes,books”
multi=””
By default this…
| WordPress | 3.5.1+ requiredTested up to 4.2.39 |
| PHP | false+ required |
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.