An image gallery, or a series of related photos displayed together, is one of the best ways to make a visual impact with a collection of images. Fortunately for WordPress users, it’s also one of the easiest to create, thanks to WordPress gallery plugins.
Whether you’re a professional photographer, a travel blogger, or a business owner, the best WordPress gallery plugins make it easy to arrange your photos (or even audio or videos) in different formats. Here, we’ve compiled the 10 top WordPress gallery plugins to show off your images and make your site look more professional.
Here’s the one downside: There are a lot of gallery plugins — the count is somewhere in the thousands. Thankfully, the best of the best tend to rise to the top of the WordPress open-source ecosystem. Here, we’ve compiled the ten best gallery plugins to show off your images and make your site look more professional.
How to Choose a WordPress Gallery Plugin
WordPress does include native image gallery functionality, but it’s limited compared to the functionality of a plugin. WordPress Plugins offer a lot more freedom in design, so they’re worth exploring.
When searching for a plugin to enhance your gallery, here are some things to look out for:
P.S. Please note that due to it being the end of the quarter, we will be slower to respond than normal. Follow-up emails with push your email to the back of our inbox, further delaying our response.
Gallery Features
While there is a good deal of overlap between what different plugins offer, each is unique in its features and intended audience. Are you looking for a quick and simple way to incorporate a basic gallery? Or do you need a tool for more customizable, complex displays? Are you aiming for casual use, or are you a photographer or professional?
These considerations should influence your plugin purchase. In your search, look out for the following features:
- Responsive designs for mobile users (this is a must-have for any gallery)
- Visual customization options, including text, colors, image sizing, animations, and filters
- Gallery layout options, including grid, tiles, vertical columns, circles, masonry grids, and mosaics (as well as templates for easily building any of these layouts)
- Lightboxes
- Image optimizations like a CDN, automatic compression, and/or lazy loading
- Social sharing options
- Asset organization and management tools
- Video and audio galleries
- Integrations for things like ecommerce, digital downloads, and media uploads/management
- Watermarking and right-click protection to prevent unauthorized use
While more options may seem good, you don’t want too many unused features in your plugin, as this makes for more unnecessary code that could slow down your website and distract from your workflow. The best WordPress gallery plugins vary based on what you’re seeking, so be sure you identify what features are most important to you and choose accordingly.
To combat this, some plugins follow an extension-based model in which the core plugin is free, and features come as paid add-ons. Look out for these plugins in our list if you favor a more modular approach.
User Friendliness
If you plan to spend a lot of time with your gallery plugin, ease of use is essential. Again, some of these plugins are designed for beginners and casual users, while others are packed with features and may take a bit more tinkering to master.
Similar to a page builder plugin, many of these gallery builders operate with a drag-and-drop interface for placing, reordering, and resizing images. A drag-and-drop approach makes things easier to implement, which is why they’re so popular. Some plugins also have developer tools for more advanced fine-tuning.
The best way to get a feel for a plugin’s interface is to try it out — most options here are freemium, allowing you to download and try out the free version before committing to an upgrade.
Price (and Free Versions!)
Generally, the more you pay for a WordPress gallery plugin, the more you’ll get out of it. This doesn’t mean you need to go all-out to make an effective gallery. Often, premium WordPress gallery plugins have generous free versions, and others go for a relatively cheap one-time payment.
Still, those looking for video galleries, theft protection, and a wider range of templates and customization features will have to invest in a premium plugin.
Best WordPress Gallery Plugins
- Envira Gallery
- Modula
- NextGEN Gallery
- Essential Grid
- FooGallery
- Photo Gallery by 10Web
- Gmedia Photo Gallery
- Jetpack
- Responsive Lightbox and Gallery
- Photo Gallery by Supsystic
- All-in-One Video Gallery
1. Envira Gallery
Envira Gallery is a leading WordPress gallery plugin for images and videos. Its flexibility, customizable features, templates, and user-friendliness make it a standout option among hundreds of competitors.
This freemium plugin is designed for both beginner and advanced WordPress site owners — for new users, the interface is based on a drag-and-drop system so creators can easily place images and adjust sizing without touching code. Envira Gallery also includes several mobile-friendly templates for free and even more in paid plans, so you won’t have to begin from scratch each time.
With a subscription, you’ll have access to unlimited galleries, Dropbox imports, WooCommerce integration, organizational tools, video galleries, social sharing, and watermarks and password protection to limit unauthorized sharing. Most of the plugin's advanced features come from add-ons: The more you pay, the more add-ons you’re allowed.
Overall, Envira Gallery strikes a good balance between simple and advanced gallery plugins. However, it’s certainly not the cheapest option, making it best for larger businesses or sites that can invest in image galleries.
Gallery example:
Pricing: Envira Gallery offers a free version and a paid version on four tiers: Basic ($29 per year), Plus ($69 per year), Pro ($99 per year), and Lifetime (a one-time payment of $299).
Best for: Bigger businesses and websites that are looking to invest in a gallery display will find Envira to be the right fit. This is one of the more costly options on our list, so it is best for a business that understands how it plans on using a gallery plugin to enhance its website and is ready to commit.
2. Modula
Like Envira Gallery, Modula is a freemium WordPress gallery plugin designed to be user-friendly and intuitive while still being flexible enough for experienced WordPress users and developers.
This plugin specializes in responsive grid galleries, whether you’re looking to build a standard grid or customize your grid to achieve a mosaic-like appearance. After you select the custom grid option, the plugin’s drag-and-drop builder lets you easily size images to format your galleries how you please. Or, style your gallery with custom CSS.
As a freemium tool, Modula gives free users a good deal of freedom with their grids. It lets you make basic and customized galleries and apply some basic style settings. If you upgrade to a paid plan, you’ll unlock lightboxes, speed optimization, gallery sorting and filters, other gallery formats like slider, slideshow, and video, and a lot more.
Gallery example:
Pricing: Modula has a free version and three paid options: Starter ($39), Trio ($69), and Business ($99).
Best for: Non-technical users. As advertised, the Modula plugin is intuitive and beginner-friendly, making it the perfect fit for those without an extensive background in web design but who still need an aesthetically pleasing gallery for their website.
3. NextGEN Gallery
Photographers and other visual artists should consider NextGEN Gallery, a popular and feature-heavy gallery plugin for WordPress.
There are many gallery options for presenting photos, including tiles, slideshows, mosaics, and masonry grids. Most of these are premium options — the free version gives you two styles, which are still enough to work with for basic galleries. The plugin also lets you tweak the details of galleries, like animations and image sizes. This tight control is ideal for those who want to present their photos exactly how they want.
The pro plans also include features to utilize galleries for an online business, including deep linking, e-commerce tools, photo organization and uploading tools, watermarks, built-in gallery management, digital downloads, lightboxes, and coupons. There’s also personal support if you encounter problems.
NextGEN is best for websites that primarily showcase photos — business websites that want to insert the occasional gallery will not have much use for many of the features. However, creative professionals who want fine control over how their images are displayed and sold to clients will get a lot from this high-quality plugin.
Gallery example:
Pricing: NextGEN Gallery has a free version and four paid versions: Starter ($24 per year), Plus ($80 per year), Pro ($112 per year), and Lifetime (a one-time payment of $280).
Best for: Creatives. This plugin is perfect for those looking to display photographs or artwork. Being able to customize image sizes and add animations adds value for creatives as they have the opportunity to showcase their work.
4. Essential Grid
Essential Grid is like the Swiss Army knife of WordPress gallery plugins. It doesn't restrict itself to just photos and videos. Oh no, it does a whole lot more. We're talking about audio files, blog posts, WooCommerce products, and a lot more. It gives you a whole canvas to create versatile grid layouts that are fully responsive and super customizable.
The plugin is user-friendly, whether you're just dipping your toes in WordPress or you've been swimming in it for years. The killer feature? You're not locked into pre-set styles. Thanks to Essential Grid's "skins," you can customize the look of each grid element, including the size, overlay effects, animations, and metadata.
So, whether you're planning to showcase your latest photography project or display a grid of your best-selling products, this gallery plugin has got you covered.
Now, one more thing that sets Essential Grid apart is its compatibility. It works great with any WordPress theme and doesn’t have any conflicts with other plugins.
There's a robust set of features in its arsenal, including lightboxes, multi-language support, and even social media integration. Want to pull in posts from your Instagram feed into your website? Easy peasy.
Gallery example:
Pricing: Essential Grid's price is split into 3 options: starter ($34/per year), enthusiast ($89/per year), and professional ($149/per year), depending on how many sites you need it for.
Best for: Who will love Essential Grid? Honestly, anyone who wants to break away from the conventional grid layout and desires more freedom in displaying content on their website.
5. FooGallery
FooGallery is a freemium gallery plugin. For no cost, FooGallery gives you access to six responsive image gallery templates, including masonry grid and thumbnail galleries, plus lightboxes (after installing an additional free plugin also made by FooPlugins).
Galleries are also highly customizable in the free version. You can adjust borders, hover effects, and loading icons and effects, then sort your galleries into albums to keep better track of your assets. FooGallery also has a drag-and-drop interface for arranging images, and you can place your gallery with a Gutenberg block or shortcode. Paired with custom CSS, FooGallery is a powerful tool, even for free.
FooGallery Pro is also affordable and adds features like three additional templates, support for video galleries, image filters, gallery filtering, lazy loading, and more hover and loading effects. Another premium feature is infinite scrolling which makes it easy to incorporate more images into one page, avoiding pagination and extra clicks from users.
Gallery example:
Pricing: FooGallery comes in a free version and three paid subscriptions: Pro Starter ($29.99 per year), Pro Expert ($59.99 per year), and Pro Commerce ($99.99 per year).
Best for: Users just getting started. FooGallery gets you a lot of value from the free version of its tool. It is highly customizable, and its drag-and-drop feature makes it beginner-friendly as well.
6. Photo Gallery by 10Web
Photo Gallery by 10Web is another WordPress gallery plugin with quality offerings in both its free and paid versions. 10Web has made this plugin accessible and balances flexibility with ease of use.
In the free version, users get some simple grid gallery formats, a file manager, and settings options for adding watermarks, creating thumbnails, and linking to social accounts. You can also create a limited number of slideshows and lightboxes.
The paid versions allow you to create more galleries and incorporate features like additional gallery layouts, rating and commenting, social sharing, e-commerce capability, support for audio and video, and auto-updates from Instagram and Facebook feeds. Most of these paid features come through add-ons — buy only what you need to keep the plugin lightweight so it doesn’t slow your site down.
Whichever version you choose, Photo Gallery by 10Web is simple to adopt and start using quickly. It’s ideal for those who need a relatively inexpensive and robust premium tool.
Gallery example:
Pricing: Photo Gallery by 10Web comes in a free version as well as a Basic version ($30) and a Pro ($60) version
Best for: Users who need something affordable with little setup. Photo Gallery by 10Web makes setting up seamless, with the trade-off being that it isn’t as customizable as the other options on our list.
7. Gmedia Photo Gallery
While not as well-known as other options here, Gmedia Photo Gallery is a solid choice for making image galleries on any WordPress website. Gmedia comes with four different blocks for Gutenberg users to support image displays. There are blocks for galleries, albums, categories, and tags.
Gmedia Photo Gallery supports slick, visually pleasing galleries that you can customize with many back-end settings.
The pro version of Gmedia supports video and audio, image editing from inside your dashboard, and adds social and email sharing as well. Many features are drag-and-drop, saving your time and energy while arranging your photos just right. It's also worth noting that Gmedia Photo Gallery is one of the cheaper paid options in this list.
Gallery example:
Pricing: Gmedia Photo Gallery is available as a free version and a premium version. Pricing is based on the number of sites, starting at $29.99 for use on one website.
Best for: Musical integration. In addition to uploading an unlimited number of photos, you can also upload audio files with plenty of options to present your gallery how you wish.
8. Jetpack
Frequent WordPress users may have heard of Jetpack, a multipurpose plugin developed by Automattic (the same team behind the WordPress CMS). Jetpack is meant to optimize a handful of common functions including performance, security, and design, under one plugin. Some of these are free and others are paid.
Among these features, Jetpack offers a tiled gallery block for free. This block builds on the native WordPress gallery feature to offer a sleeker, more customizable gallery design. Users can format their galleries as square tiles, a circular grid, tiled columns, or a mosaic, with some basic customizations available too.
Jetpack is meant for those who want simple, clean image grids through an all-in-one plugin. Fewer plugins help WordPress site performance, making Jetpack great for those who want to keep a light codebase.
Gallery example:
Pricing: The tiles gallery block is free with the Jetpack plugin (which is also free!).
Best for: People who want a plugin that can do it all. The Jetpack plugin is constantly updated, one of the top WordPress gallery plugins, and is easy to use.
9. Responsive Lightbox & Gallery
Responsive Lightbox & Gallery is another prominent figure in the WordPress gallery space: This plugin takes a modular approach to its features, more so than other plugins we’ve discussed.
The core plugin is free and lets you do a lot with its three included templates and settings. From there, you can customize your installation with paid extensions. This means you can pay for and install what you need without using storage space or budget on excess features. These extensions enable access to different types of gallery views, stylish lightboxes, and remote galleries (i.e. using images from external sites). There’s also the option to purchase all extensions in a bundle.
As the name implies, this plugin is largely focused on lightboxes. If you want to present photos one by one via lightbox, add this plugin to your list. Also note that Responsive Lightbox & Gallery supports videos, posts, and WooCommerce integrations.
Gallery example:
Pricing: The core Responsive Lightbox & Gallery plugin is free and can be enhanced with paid extensions. Individual extensions are $19, or you can purchase all extensions for $49.
Best for: Those who want a gallery plugin with zero coding knowledge required. This plugin is also great for those who have experience with lightbox and want a quick way to implement a gallery onto their website.
10. Photo Gallery by Supsystic
The freemium Photo Gallery plugin by Supsystic is great for WordPress site owners looking for more simplicity in their premium photo gallery plugin. On top of its capable free version, Photo Gallery comes with a paid option that lets you make many types of impressive displays.
With this plugin, you have access to eight different customizable gallery layouts, including a carousel and post feed (if you want to try content other than images) and a Polaroid-style presentation where you can place captions and evoke a nostalgic feel. The affordable premium version also unlocks video galleries, tags, and albums for better organization, a CDN to get images to users’ devices more quickly, and more.
Even with all this plugin offers, its galleries remain mobile-friendly and simple to set up. To help prevent unauthorized use, you can turn on watermarks in the free version as well.
Gallery example:
Pricing: Photo Gallery by Supsystic has a free version and a paid version, starting at $46 for a one-year license on one site.
Best for: Those who want a plugin that is simple to implement but still comes with plenty of options. Photo Gallery gives you your pick of display options, anti-theft capabilities, and built-in image compression and optimization.
11. All-in-One Video Gallery
WordPress users needing a dedicated video option for their galleries can check out All-in-One Video Gallery by Team Plugins360. Video galleries are a powerful way to keep visitors engaged on your pages, and this plugin makes it possible to display them in a searchable gallery.
Like our other image-centric plugins, All-in-One Video Gallery is no-code and intuitive for new website owners. Incorporate videos from sites like YouTube and Vimeo, or place your videos — the plugin supports popular video file formats. It also included playback buttons so users can control videos as they want.
You can organize videos with tags and categories and assign IDs to videos in the backend. On the viewing side, the free version has simple grid and list view options, with more layouts available with the premium plugin.
The paid version of this plugin allows for other gallery formats (popup and slider), audio content, a thumbnail generator, and more SEO-friendly markup.
Gallery example:
Pricing: All-in-One Video Gallery offers a free version and two premium versions: Pro ($4.99 per month or a one-time payment of $149.99) and Business ($9.99 per month or a one-time payment of $289.99).
Best for: Video integration. If you are looking for a simple way to implement videos in gallery form, this plugin provides an intuitive and easy way.
WordPress Gallery Plugins: Keep Your Images In Line
On websites, galleries make engagement happen, and gallery plugins make galleries happen. While they vary in price, features, and target user, all of these plugins aim to accomplish one goal: keep visitors on your pages for longer.
That’s why the plugin you use is as important as the content you choose to populate your gallery. An image gallery of generic stock photos probably won’t have as much of an effect as your own high-quality images. So, take the time to build out your photo library, then select the plugin that best fits your needs.
