NinjaFirewall vs Wordfence Security
Last week, we compared the WordPress firewall plugins BBQ Firewall and Wordfence Security, after noticing that Google’s Search console showed that a lot of people were coming to our website looking for that comparison, despite us not having one. The results also showed a lot of people looking for a comparison of NinjaFirewall to Wordfence Security, but the top result for that search is a page comparing Wordfence Security to Security Ninja, which is unrelated to NinjaFirewall. So it seems like a comparison between the two would be useful to provide.
The most important thing to know about WordPress firewall plugins is the amount of protection they offer against real threats, but we are somehow the only ones that do testing that would measure that. A lot of the claimed threats that WordPress security plugins claim to protect against are not really threats. What is a real threat is vulnerabilities in other plugins being exploited and that is something that firewall plugins can provide protection against. The developers of NinjaFirewall and Wordfence Security both provide protection against those, but how much?
Since last year we have done 12 tests of a large group of WordPress security plugins to see if they would protect against real vulnerabilities that had existed in other plugins. In those tests, NinjaFirewall provided at least some protection in half of the tests. Wordfence Security only provided at least some protection in a third of the tests.
Another method of testing we have is automated testing to see if WordPress firewall plugins will protect against the same attacks our firewall plugin can. With NinjaFirewall providing protection against 36.9% and Wordfence Security only 20%, in the most recent run we did of that at the beginning of October. NinjaFirewall not only does the best of competing plugins and free plugins, but it is significantly better than the next best option, which is Wordfence Security.
While providing protection against a third of tested attacks doesn’t sound great, in practical terms, that still means it will provide protection against many attacks going on. Where it doesn’t do as well is if more advanced hacking attempts are occurring.
Wordfence Security’s Performance Penalty
While we look to be the only people that are trying to measure the amount of security provided by WordPress security plugins, lots of people measure the performance of their websites. Wordfence Security has been repeatedly brought up as being a source of a significant performance hit in testing. In our own testing, NinjaFirewall delivers better protection while not causing the same performance penalty or causing the same memory usage spike as Wordfence Security.
Better Paid Alternative
For those looking for a free WordPress firewall plugin, it is easy to recommend NinjaFirewall, not just over Wordfence Security, but over any other free plugin. Based on our testing, that will provide very good protection without costing you anything.
For many websites, it doesn’t make sense to pay for security, so NinjaFirewall is what to use. Despite that, it is a lot less popular than Wordfence Security, 80,000+ installs vs 4+ million installs. That speaks to how little the security provided by WordPress security plugins actually matters in which get used. The result of that is plenty of instances where WordPress websites have gotten hacked, despite using one or even multiple security plugins.
So what about those that have the budget to spend on security and want to spend it to get better security than NinjaFirewall provides? That is where our Plugin Vulnerabilities Firewall plugin comes in. Through the kind of testing we mentioned before, we have been able to expand the level of protection that we can offer beyond what NinjaFirewall provides. Basically, we start with the kind of protection they offer (and to a lesser degree other plugins offer) and then we make sure it applies in more situations and can’t be bypassed in ways that NinjaFirewall can be. That means it can provide protection even if a hacker is more advanced in their attempts to breach websites. That plugin comes as part of a larger service that provides protection beyond what a security plugin can provide for your website.
Plugin Security Scorecard Grade for NinjaFirewall
Checked on June 12, 2025See issues causing the plugin to get less than A+ grade