BBQ Firewall vs Wordfence Security
Looking at Google’s Search Console stats for our website showed that a lot of people were coming to our website searching on “BBQ Firewall vs Wordfence”, despite us not having a page comparing the two WordPress security plugins. It doesn’t look like anyone else has done a comparison, so it seems like that 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 BBQ Firewall and Wordfence Security make it sound like they provide strong protection against those vulnerabilities, but in reality they don’t do a very good job.
Since last year we have done 11 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, BBQ Firewall only provided protection against two. Wordfence Security only did slightly better, providing protection in three.
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. The results for both plugins are not good. With BBQ Firewall only providing protection against 3.9% and Wordfence Security only 20%, in the most recent run we did of that at the beginning of October.
Better Alternatives
Based on those results, Wordfence Security is a better option than BBQ Firewall for those looking for protection, but there are two much better options.
In addition to protection, the developer of the BBQ Firewall plugin emphasizes its speed. That is an area where Wordfence Security is weak, as it causes a significant performance penalty. In our testing, there are two plugins that manage to provide better protection than Wordfence Security, while not causing the same performance hit.
Those two plugins are our Plugin Vulnerabilities Firewall and NinjaFirewall. NinjaFirewall does significantly better in our automated testing, with protection against 36.8% of the attacks. Our plugin provides protection against 100%.
While NinjaFirewall is a competitor to our plugin, we recommend it for websites where doesn’t make sense to be spending money on security. For the price, free, it provides great protection, much better than Wordfence Security’s, despite being much less popular.
Our firewall plugin is part of our service, which provides a lot beyond just the firewall plugin, so for those who need security better than can be gotten for free, it can provide a lot of additional protection.
Plugin Security Scorecard Grade for BBQ Firewall
Checked on June 17, 2025See issues causing the plugin to get less than A+ grade
Plugin Security Scorecard Grade for NinjaFirewall
Checked on June 12, 2025See issues causing the plugin to get less than A+ grade