by
Alexandre Amato
5 (1 reviews)
SpamAnvil – AI Anti-Spam & Comment Spam Protection
Free AI anti-spam & Akismet alternative. Uses ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini & other LLMs to block comment spam that traditional filters miss.
SpamAnvil ranks #25,251 among WordPress.org plugins with 20+ active installations, is #1,033 of 2,958 in the Discussion & Community category, a 5/5 rating from 1 reviews, and was last updated Oct 24, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.
Compatible with WP 7.1.4
v1.21.0
Current Version v1.21.0
Updated 2 weeks ago
Last Update on 24 Oct, 2026
Refreshed 1 week ago
Last Refreshed on
#1,033 of 2,958 in Discussion & Community
Top 50% by installs
Downloads -46% this week
Actively maintained
Rank
#25,251
—
No change
Active Installs
20+
-33.3%
KW Avg Position
101
0.5 worse
Downloads
3.7K
+9 today
Support Resolved
0%
—
No change
Rating
100%
Review 5 out of 5
5
(1 reviews)
Next Milestone 30
20+
30+
2,506
Ranks to Climb
-
Growth Needed
8,000,000
Active Installs
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Rank Changes
Current
#25,251
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5.0
1 reviews
Overall
100%
5
1
(100%)
4
0
(0%)
3
0
(0%)
2
0
(0%)
1
0
(0%)
Support Threads Overview
Resolved
Unresolved
1
Total Threads
0
Resolved
1
Unresolved
0%
Resolution Rate
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- Version
- 1.21.0
- Last Updated
- Oct 24, 2026
- Requires WP
- 5.8+
- Tested Up To
- 7.1.4
- PHP Version
- 7.4 or higher
- Author
- Alexandre Amato
Support & Rating
- Rating
- ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5
- Reviews
- 1
- Support Threads
- 1
- Resolved
- 0%
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Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about SpamAnvil – AI Anti-Spam & Comment Spam Protection
Yes, 100% free and open source. There is no premium version. You only need an API key from an AI provider, and free options are available (e.g., OpenRouter with free Llama models).
Akismet uses a centralized cloud service owned by Automattic. It requires a paid subscription for commercial sites, and all your comments are sent to Akismet's servers. SpamAnvil lets you choose your own AI provider, works with free models, keeps you in control of your data, and uses true AI understanding instead of statistical pattern matching.
Antispam Bee uses traditional techniques like honeypot fields, country blocking, and regex rules. These work for basic spam but miss sophisticated attacks. SpamAnvil adds AI analysis that actually reads and understands comments in context, catching spam that looks legitimate to keyword-based systems.
For free usage: OpenRouter with the free Llama 3.1 8B model works surprisingly well for spam detection. For best accuracy: OpenAI GPT-4o-mini offers the best quality-to-price ratio. For privacy: Google Gemini or a self-hosted model via the Generic OpenAI-compatible option. For maximum reliability: Configure a primary + fallback provider so spam checking never stops.
No. In the default async mode, comments are held as "pending" and processed in the background via WP-Cron every 5 minutes. Your visitors experience zero added latency. There's also a sync mode available if you prefer instant results.
SpamAnvil has built-in resilience: failed requests are retried up to 3 times with exponential backoff (1 min, 5 min, 15 min), and comments wait as pending meanwhile — nothing is approved without a verdict. You can also configure a fallback provider that kicks in automatically when the primary fails. A rate limit (HTTP 429) is handled differently: the queue pauses until the provider's limit resets and a notice on the admin screens explains why.
No — your OpenRouter account ran out of its daily quota for free models. OpenRouter allows a small number of free-model requests per day on an account that has never bought credits (50 a day at the time of writing) and far more (1,000 a day) once the account has bought at least $10 of credits. That is a one-time purchase: the free models stay free and the credits are not spent on them. To raise the limit, buy credits at openrouter.ai/settings/credits. Alternatively add a second provider (Settings → SpamAnvil → Providers → Fallback) so comments keep being classified while OpenRouter is out of quota. While the limit is in force SpamAnvil holds new comments as pending, sends nothing, and resumes by itself when the quota resets; the admin notice shows the time of the next attempt.
Yes — with WordPress itself. Settings → Discussion → "Disallowed Comment Keys" takes one entry per line and matches it against the commenter's IP address, email, name, website and the text of the comment; a match sends the comment straight to the trash at submission, before SpamAnvil (or any AI call) is involved. "Comment Moderation", just above it, does the same but holds the comment for review instead. SpamAnvil adds the automatic part: an IP whose comments are marked as spam three times (configurable on the IP tab) — whether by the AI, by the honeypot and heuristics, or by you marking the comment as spam by hand — is blocked at the door for 24 hours, doubling on each repeat up to 30 days. The IP tab lists the blocked addresses.
Comment content is sent to your chosen AI provider for analysis - this is the only external data transmission. API keys are encrypted with authenticated AES-256-GCM in the database (or can be defined in wp-config.php to never touch the database). IP addresses are stored as salted, keyed hashes (HMAC-SHA-256, not reversible without your site's secret) and displayed masked in the admin panel.
Yes. SpamAnvil hooks into WordPress's standard comment system, which WooCommerce product reviews also use.
