Clean database by deleting orphaned data such as 'revisions', 'expired transients', optimize database and more...
- Installs
- 100,000+
- Rating
- 4.9 (2K)
- Updated
- 2 months ago
WP-Sweep
WP-Sweep allows you to clean up unused, orphaned and duplicated data in your WordPress. It also optimizes your database tables.
- Active installs
- 100,000+
- #292 of 1,000
- Downloads, all time
- 2.3M
- 2,256,409
- Downloads, 30 days
- 25.5K
- 6K in the last 7
- Rating
- 4.7 / 5
- 138 reviews
- Last updated
- 2 months ago
- Aug 24, 2026
- Version
- 2.0.1
- 21 releases
Upkeep and compatibility
| Last updated | August 24, 2026Updated in the last 3 months |
|---|---|
| Tested up to | WordPress 7.1.4Covers WordPress 7.1.4, the current release |
| Needs WordPress | 6.8 or newer |
| Needs PHP | 8.2 or newer |
| First published | February 25, 2015 |
| Support, last two months | 1 of 1 threads resolved (100%) |
Reviews
4.7 / 5 from 138 reviews
| 5 stars | 125 |
|---|---|
| 4 stars | 1 |
| 3 stars | 1 |
| 2 stars | 1 |
| 1 star | 10 |
Downloads, last 30 days
What the author says it does
WP-Sweep finds the rows WordPress leaves behind and removes them. Revisions of posts you edited years ago, meta belonging to a post that was deleted, terms attached to nothing, term relationships pointing at posts that no longer exist, expired transients: none of it is visible anywhere in wp-admin, and all of it is in your database.
It uses the proper WordPress delete functions wherever they can reach the row, rather than running raw delete queries, so the hooks other plugins rely on still fire. Only the rows the API refuses to touch — orphaned meta whose object ID is 0 — are deleted directly.
Features
- Revisions
- Auto drafts
- Deleted posts
- Unapproved comments
- Spammed comments
- Deleted comments
- Orphaned post meta
- Orphaned comment meta
- Orphaned user meta
- Orphaned term meta
- Orphaned term relationships
- Unused terms
- Duplicated post meta
- Duplicated comment meta
- Duplicated user meta
- Duplicated term meta
- Transient options
- oEmbed caches in post meta
- Optimizes database tables
Delete functions used
- wp_delete_post_revision()
- wp_delete_post()
- wp_delete_comment()
- delete_post_meta()
- delete_comment_meta()
- delete_user_meta()
- delete_term_meta()
- wp_remove_object_terms()
- wp_delete_term()
- delete_transient()
- delete_site_transient()
Known incompatibilities
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
The Tools -> Sweep screen has a new address
It is still under Tools, but the address changed from tools.php?page=wp-sweep/admin.php to tools.php?page=wp-sweep. Update any bookmark.
The old address was the legacy “plugin file as menu slug” form, which put the plugin’s installation directory name into the page URL.
Where did Sweep All go?
Every row has a checkbox and the table has a Sweep bulk action, so ticking the header checkbox and applying it does what Sweep All did — and lets you leave out the ones you do not want.
My snippet calling WPSweep::get_instance() stopped working
The classes are renamed in 2.0.0:
- WPSweep is now WP_Sweep
- WPSweep_Api is now WP_Sweep_API
- WPSweep_Command is now WP_Sweep_Command
So WPSweep::get_instance()->sweep( 'revisions' ) becomes WP_Sweep::get_instance()->sweep( 'revisions' ). There is no compatibility alias, so the old name raises a fatal error rather than failing quietly.
Every filter and every wp_sweep_admin_*_sweep action keeps the name it had.
Which filters can I use to protect data from being swept?
Four per-type filters take a list of meta keys that must never be deleted, and each supports * as a wildcard:
add_filter( 'wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist', function ( $keys ) { $keys[] = '_my_plugin_setting'; $keys[] = '_acme_*'; return $keys; } );
A key I protected was swept anyway, or far too much was kept
Before 2.0.0 the exclusion was a SQL LIKE clause, and LIKE treats an underscore as a single-character wildcard. A pattern of _my_key therefore also matched Xmy!key, and a good deal else. Matching happens in PHP now, so an underscore is an underscore and only * is a wildcard. Check your list if you were relying on the old behaviour.
Does WP-Sweep leave anything behind when I delete it?
Nothing. WP-Sweep stores no option rows, creates no database tables, registers no capabilities and schedules no events. uninstall.php runs anyway and sweeps up after itself across a whole network rather than the first hundred sites.
Latest changelog entry
- NEW: A Sweep link on the plugin’s row of the Plugins screen, opening Tools -> Sweep.
- FIXED: The Sweep screen timed out on large databases. 2.0.0 computed every count before printing a byte — and asked for each table’s total row count once per row instead of once, so SELECT COUNT(*) ran against the postmeta table four times per load. The screen now renders at once and fetches the counts afterwards, one request at a time, so no single request outlives PHP’s time limit.
Screenshots
Tools -> WP-Sweep, listing every sweep with what it removes and how much of it there is 
A Details list, showing a sample of what one sweep would remove 
The same screen after a bulk sweep, reporting what went
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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.