#51 by installs
Security Optimizer – The All-In-One Protection Plugin
Secure your WordPress site from brute-force attacks, threats, malware, and bots. Free to use and easy to set up.
- Installs
- 1+ million
- Rating
- 4.5 (157)
- Updated
- 17 days ago
BBQ Firewall – Fast & Powerful Firewall Security
The fastest firewall plugin for WordPress. Protect against a wide range of threats with minimal performance impact.
- Active installs
- 100,000+
- #346 of 1,000
- Downloads, all time
- 3.5M
- 3,505,112
- Downloads, 30 days
- 14.3K
- 3.2K in the last 7
- Rating
- 4.9 / 5
- 160 reviews
- Last updated
- 3 months ago
- Aug 9, 2026
- Version
- 20260809
- 38 releases
Upkeep and compatibility
| Last updated | August 9, 2026Updated in the last 3 months |
|---|---|
| Tested up to | WordPress 7.1.4Covers WordPress 7.1.4, the current release |
| Needs WordPress | 4.7 or newer |
| Needs PHP | 5.6.20 or newer |
| First published | March 5, 2010 |
| Support, last two months | 1 of 2 threads resolved (50%) |
Reviews
4.9 / 5 from 160 reviews
| 5 stars | 157 |
|---|---|
| 4 stars | 1 |
| 3 stars | 0 |
| 2 stars | 0 |
| 1 star | 2 |
Downloads, last 30 days
What the author says it does
🔥 Install, activate, and done!
🔥 Powerful protection from WP’s fastest firewall plugin.
BBQ Firewall is a lightweight, blazing-fast firewall plugin that protects your site against a wide range of threats. BBQ checks all incoming traffic and quietly blocks bad requests containing nasty stuff like eval(, base64_, and excessively long request-strings. This is a simple yet solid solution for sites that are unable to use a strong Apache/.htaccess firewall.
🔥 Adds a strong firewall to ANY WordPress site
🔥 Works with all WordPress plugins and themes
Powerful Protection
BBQ protects your site against many threats:
- SQL injection attacks
- Executable file uploads
- Directory traversal attacks
- Unsafe character requests
- Excessively long requests
- PHP remote/file execution
- XSS, XXE, and related attacks
- Protects against bad bots
- Protects against bad referrers
- Protects against bad POST content
- Protects against many other bad requests
🔥 Works great with Blackhole for Bad Bots and Banhammer
Awesome Features
BBQ provides all the best firewall features:
- Rated 5 stars at WordPress.org
- 100% plug-&-play, zero configuration
- 100% focused on security and performance
- Blocks a wide range of malicious URL requests
- Fastest Web Application Firewall (WAF) for WordPress
- Based on the 7G/8G Firewall
The opening of the plugin's own description. The full text, installation notes and changelog are on its WordPress.org page.
Questions the author answers
How to test that the plugin is working?
Visit the plugin settings page and click the “Test Firewall” link.
Do you offer any other security plugins?
Yes, three of them:
- BBQ Firewall for blazing-fast firewall security
- Blackhole for Bad Bots to protect your site against bad bots
- Banhammer to monitor and ban any user or IP address
Pro versions with more features available at Plugin Planet.
Do I need to do anything else for BBQ to work?
Nope, just install and relax knowing that BBQ is protecting your site from bad URL requests.
Where are the plugin settings?
No settings needed for BBQ! Everything is done automatically behind the scenes. Zero configuration required. The free version of BBQ is strictly plug-n-play, set-it-and-forget-it, with no settings to configure whatsoever. Just install, activate, and enjoy better security and robust protection against malicious requests.
Is BBQ free version compatible with Wordfence?
Does it makes sense to use both? Yes BBQ free and BBQ Pro are both compatible with any plugin written according to WP APIs. And yes, there is benefit to using BBQ with any other security plugin, including Wordfence. They protect against different threats, so using both provides additional protection.
Does BBQ make changes to my .htaccess file?
Absolutely not. Unlike other security/firewall plugins, neither BBQ (free version) nor BBQ Pro make any changes to any .htaccess file.
Latest changelog entry
If you like BBQ, please take a moment to give a 5-star rating. It helps to keep development and support going strong. Thank you!
🔥 For stronger firewall protection and powerful features, check out BBQ Pro »
2026/08/09
- Updates plugin settings page
- Tests on WordPress 7.1
2026/04/19
- Updates plugin settings page
- Improves readme.txt documentation
- Tests on WordPress 7.0
Full changelog @ https://plugin-planet.com/wp/changelog/block-bad-queries.txt
Tagged
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Where this page's numbers come from
Read from the WordPress.org plugin API on , when WordPress 7.1.4 was the current release. WordPress.org rounds active installs into buckets. These are the directory's figures, not my verdict, and I haven't tested this plugin. The author takes donations at their donate page.