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The best free WordPress popup plugin for most sites is Popup Maker. If you build with Elementor, it’s the Master Addons Popup Builder, because every popup is a normal Elementor template. Both give you unlimited popups on a free tier you can actually ship. Each holds one thing back: Popup Maker sells exit intent as a paid extension, and Master Addons runs automatic popups on page load until you upgrade.
Most “best free popup plugin” lists are published by companies selling a paid popup tool, so the free options get a paragraph and the paid one gets the top slot. This list only counts plugins with a free tier you can run in production. Where a free plan caps traffic, limits active campaigns, or puts a core trigger behind the upgrade, the entry says so in the same sentence as the praise.
Install counts and ratings below were pulled from the WordPress.org plugin API on 12 August 2026, not copied from another roundup.
A free popup plugin is only worth installing if the free tier does the job. Four things decide that.
| Plugin | Active installs | Rating | Free triggers | The free-tier ceiling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Popup Maker | 700,000+ | 4.9 | Time, click, form submit | No cap on popups; exit intent is a paid extension |
| Master Addons | 30,000+ | 4.5 | Page load, plus click via a separate widget | Automatic popups run on page load; scroll and exit are Pro |
| Hustle | 90,000+ | 4.4 | Time, click, exit, scroll | Limited active modules at once |
| Depicter | 80,000+ | 4.6 | Time, scroll, exit | Watermark plus a monthly view cap |
| ShopLentor | 80,000+ | 4.5 | Time, click | Fewer templates on free |
| Popup Box | 50,000+ | 4.6 | Time, click, scroll | Countdown, coupon and video types are paid |
| Poptin | 20,000+ | 4.9 | Time, exit, click, scroll | About 1,000 unique visitors a month |
| Icegram Engage | 10,000+ | 4.7 | Time, click, exit | Some themes and advanced triggers are paid |
| MailOptin | 10,000+ | 4.8 | Time, click, scroll | Exit intent is Pro |
700,000+ active installs, 4.9 stars. The default free choice for most WordPress sites.
The free plan puts no cap on how many popups you build or how often they show. You get opt-ins, slide-ins, modal forms and announcement bars, with triggers for time delay, click and form submission. Cookies control how often a popup reappears, and targeting rules pick the pages and users that see it. It connects to WPForms, Ninja Forms, Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms without extra glue.
Two caveats. Exit intent is a paid extension rather than a free trigger, which matters if leaving-visitor capture is the whole reason you’re installing a popup plugin. And design happens through settings and theme presets rather than a visual canvas, so anything beyond the built-in looks means writing CSS.
Pick it if: you want the safest, most-supported free popup plugin and you can live without exit intent.
30,000+ active installs, 4.5 stars. The pick for Elementor sites, and this is our plugin, so weigh the next two paragraphs accordingly.
Every popup is a normal Elementor template. You design it on the canvas you already use, drop in any widget you already know, then set when it appears. Be precise about the free tier, because the editor is misleading here. The trigger dropdown lists page load, scroll, exit intent, inactivity and click, but on free the front end runs every automatic popup as page load, and targeting is a single Entire Site rule. The exception is the separate Popup Trigger widget, which is free and opens a popup from a button click. Scroll, exit intent, inactivity and page-level targeting need Pro, and our Display Conditions breakdown traces that line through the plugin source.
Where the paid line falls: the popup builder itself is free, not a teaser for Pro. A few unrelated things sit in Pro, such as custom CSS and JavaScript inside the Widget Builder and full white labelling. For popups specifically, the free tier is the whole feature. The Popup Builder documentation covers every trigger and rule.
Pick it if: your site runs on Elementor and you want to design popups on the canvas you already use. Skip it if: you don’t use Elementor, because the whole point is the editor.
90,000+ active installs, 4.4 stars. WPMU DEV’s list-building tool, and the second most-installed plugin here.
Free gives you popups, slide-ins, embeds and social share widgets, with time, click, exit intent and scroll triggers. That’s a genuinely complete trigger set on a free plan, which is rarer than it should be. It connects to the major email services, so a new subscriber lands in Mailchimp, AWeber or ConvertKit directly.
The ceiling is the number of modules you can run at once. Fine for a small site with one opt-in and one announcement. Tight the moment you want several campaigns live together, and that moment tends to arrive just as the site starts growing.
Pick it if: email list growth is the only job and you’ll run two or three campaigns, not ten.
80,000+ active installs, 4.6 stars. The one that leads with design.
A drag-and-drop builder with a large template library, so a beginner ships something polished in minutes without touching CSS. Scroll and exit triggers are on the free plan, along with device-based display rules.
Two things to know before you build a campaign on it: free carries a small brand watermark, and there’s a monthly view cap. On a quiet site neither bites. On a busy one you’ll meet both at once, and that is where you decide whether to upgrade or move.
Pick it if: you want a designed popup fast and your traffic is modest.
80,000+ active installs, 4.5 stars. A WooCommerce growth suite with a popup builder inside it.
If you already run ShopLentor for product layouts, the popup module is a natural add for cart reminders, sale banners and email capture tied to store events. It ships pre-designed templates and the usual colour and font controls, with time and click triggers free.
The store focus cuts both ways. On a WooCommerce site it’s context you don’t have to build. On a content site you’re installing a commerce suite to get a modal, which is a lot of plugin for the job.
Pick it if: you run WooCommerce and want popups that understand cart events.
50,000+ active installs, 4.6 stars. Unlimited simple popups, no subscription.
AYS built this for people who want a lot of straightforward popups rather than a campaign platform. Build as many as you like on free, using custom HTML or shortcodes from other plugins, with time, click and scroll triggers.
The richer formats are where it stops: countdown, coupon and video popups are paid. That makes it a good fit for announcements and opt-ins and a poor fit for a promotional calendar built on urgency.
Pick it if: you want many plain popups and no monthly ceiling.
20,000+ active installs, 4.9 stars. The most generous trigger set on this list, and the tightest traffic limit.
Free includes exit intent, time, click and scroll triggers, a visual editor, and direct integrations with email and CRM tools. Feature for feature it reads like a paid plan.
Then you hit the number: roughly 1,000 unique visitors a month. Cross it and you’re on a paid plan. That makes Poptin excellent for a new site testing whether popups earn their keep, and unusable once traffic arrives. Work out which one you are before you build the campaign on it.
Pick it if: you’re validating the idea on a small or new site.
10,000+ active installs, 4.7 stars. A small conversion suite rather than a single popup tool.
Free covers popups, floating action bars and toast notifications, so you can match the message type to the moment instead of forcing everything into a modal. A cookie notice does not need to be the same shape as a newsletter offer, and this plugin lets you build them differently.
Time, click and exit triggers are free and setup is quick. Some themes and the more advanced triggers move into paid, so read the feature list before you build a campaign that depends on one specific trigger.
Pick it if: you want bars and toasts alongside popups from one plugin.
10,000+ active installs, 4.8 stars. A focused newsletter tool with the highest rating of the small-install group.
It builds opt-in popups, in-post forms and notification bars, and it connects cleanly to the main email platforms. Time, click and scroll triggers are free.
Exit intent is Pro. That’s the trigger most people want for cart and content pages, so if leaving-visitor capture is your goal, Master Addons or Hustle give it to you free and MailOptin does not.
Pick it if: newsletter opt-ins are the whole job and you don’t need exit intent.
This is the question that stops people installing any of these, and the answer is narrower than the worry suggests.
Google’s intrusive interstitial guidance targets three specific patterns on mobile: a popup that covers the main content as soon as someone arrives from search, a standalone interstitial they have to dismiss before reading anything, and a layout where the above-the-fold area is styled to look like an interstitial. A popup that fires on exit intent, after a scroll, or on a click is none of those.
The penalty is also page-level rather than sitewide, so a badly-timed popup on one landing page costs you that page rather than the domain.
Three settings keep you clear of it, and every plugin here can do all three:
Free tiers cover most sites. Three cases where they don’t.
You need built-in A/B testing. Comparing two headlines properly, with the plugin splitting traffic and reporting the winner, is paid territory almost everywhere. You can approximate it by hand, but you’ll get bored before you get significance.
You need revenue attributed per campaign. Knowing a popup earned money, rather than that it collected emails, needs analytics most free plans don’t ship.
Your traffic breaks the cap. This is the one that surprises people, because it arrives as a success. Poptin’s 1,000 visitors and Depicter’s view cap are fine until the month a post does well.
There’s also a case for no popup plugin at all. A single permanent announcement can live in a theme banner, and a store counting every millisecond may prefer a hand-built modal. Pick the lightest tool that does the job, then measure whether it earned its weight.
If you’d rather see paid tools weighed alongside free ones, the popup builder plugin roundup covers the premium end properly. And if you’re comparing whole addon suites rather than popup tools, Master Addons vs Essential Addons and the Essential Addons alternatives guide are the two to read.
Popup Maker, for most sites. It has no cap on popups, real triggers, wide form integrations, and 700,000+ active installs behind it. If your site is built with Elementor, the Master Addons Popup Builder is the better fit, because you design popups on the Elementor canvas and exit intent is included free rather than sold as an extension.
Hustle, Poptin, Depicter and Icegram Engage include exit intent on their free tier. Popup Maker sells it as a paid extension, MailOptin puts it in Pro, and Master Addons lets you pick it in the editor but still runs the popup on page load until you upgrade. Check this first if leaving-visitor capture is the reason you’re installing a popup plugin at all, because it’s the most commonly gated trigger.
You can hand-code a modal with HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript, but you lose triggers, targeting and analytics, and you own the maintenance forever. For almost every site a free popup plugin is faster to build and easier to control than a custom one.
The Master Addons Popup Builder, because every popup is a normal Elementor template rather than a separate editor you have to learn. The free tier includes page load, scroll, exit intent, click and inactivity triggers, with targeting by page, post type or user role.
A well-built one adds very little, especially if it only loads its assets on pages where a popup actually runs. Slowdowns usually come from stacking several conversion plugins or loading heavy animations. Pick one lightweight tool, then test your page speed before and after so you know rather than assume.
Only the intrusive ones, and only on the page they appear on. Google’s guidance targets popups that block the main content on mobile immediately after someone arrives from search. Exit intent, scroll and click triggers sit outside that, and cookie notices and age gates are explicitly exempt.
For opt-ins, announcements and exit offers, free is enough for most small and medium sites. You need paid mainly for built-in A/B testing, per-campaign revenue analytics, or traffic that exceeds a free plan’s visitor cap.
On Elementor, install the free Master Addons Popup Builder and build your first popup on the canvas you already know. Off Elementor, install Popup Maker and accept that exit intent costs extra, or take Hustle if exit intent is non-negotiable and two or three campaigns is your ceiling.
Then build one popup, not five. Give it a scroll or exit trigger rather than a page-load one, and leave it a fortnight before you judge it. Twenty-five Elementor popup examples covers the layouts that actually convert, and pricing has the tiers if you later want the Pro extras.
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