10 Best Category Icon Alternatives in 2026
Updated September 7, 2026 · Ranked by how closely each plugin matches, from WordPress.org data · How this works
Category Icon has 2,000+ active installs on WordPress.org. These 10 plugins share its category or its tags on WordPress.org, are actively maintained, and each has at least 100 active installs. They are ordered by how closely they match, not by our opinion.
The 10 closest alternatives to Category Icon
- 1
Taxonomy Images
Closest match4.4 (40) 9,000+ active installsAssociate images from your media library to categories, tags and custom taxonomies.
Shares the category, image, taxonomy tags on WordPress.org. About 4.5 times the installs, no update since February 15, 2024.
- 2
4.9 (76) 10,000+ active installsAllows you to merge terms, move terms between taxonomies, and set term parents, individually or in bulk.
Shares the category, taxonomy, term tags on WordPress.org. About 5 times the installs, last updated December 11, 2025.
- 3
5.0 (24) 2,000+ active installsSwitch the taxonomy for all terms or only child terms of a specified parent term.
Shares the category, taxonomy, term tags on WordPress.org. A similar number of installs, last updated July 14, 2026.
- 4
4.4 (23) 2,000+ active installsCreate custom enhanced pages for categories and any taxonomy term and manage them as a custom post.
Shares the taxonomy, term tags on WordPress.org. A similar number of installs, no update since July 14, 2016.
- 5
4.8 (20) 6,000+ active installsSort taxonomy terms, your way.
Shares the taxonomy, term tags on WordPress.org. About 3 times the installs, last updated March 26, 2026.
- 6
4.8 (23) 5,000+ active installsThis plugin can remove specific taxonomy base slug from your permalinks (e.g. "/genre/fiction/" to "/fiction/").
Shares the category, taxonomy tags on WordPress.org. About 2.5 times the installs, no update since November 28, 2017.
- 7
4.8 (34) 1,000+ active installsA plugin to add widget for listing Categories and Taxonomies. Extending Default WordPress Category Widget.
Shares the category, taxonomy tags on WordPress.org. About half the installs, last updated September 12, 2025.
- 8
4.9 (28) 10,000+ active installsQuickly and easily reorder taxonomy terms with an easy to use and intuitive drag and drop interface.
Shares the term tag on WordPress.org. About 5 times the installs, no update since March 22, 2023.
- 9
4.6 (30) 10,000+ active installsAllow your visitors to contact you via mobile phones, or access your site's pages instantly.
Shares the icon tag on WordPress.org. About 5 times the installs, last updated June 15, 2026.
- 10
4.5 (175) 50,000+ active installsSearch and Filtering for Custom Posts, Categories, Tags, Taxonomies, Post Dates and Post Types
Shares the category, taxonomy tags on WordPress.org. About 25 times the installs, last updated 16 days ago.
Switching from Category Icon: common questions
What is the best alternative to Category Icon?
Taxonomy Images is the closest match: it shares the same WordPress.org tags and has 9,000+ active installs with a 4.4 out of 5 rating.
Which Category Icon alternative has the most users?
Search & Filter, with 50,000+ active installs reported by WordPress.org.
Which Category Icon alternative is rated highest?
Term Management Tools, rated 4.9 out of 5 by 76 reviewers. Only plugins with at least 50 reviews are counted.
Are these Category Icon alternatives free?
Every plugin listed here is free to install from WordPress.org. Where WordPress.org marks a plugin as commercial, the developer also sells a paid version or add-ons, and that is shown on each plugin.
How are alternatives chosen?
Automatically, from WordPress.org data: plugins that share a category top 10 with Category Icon score highest, then plugins that appear in the same WordPress.org rankings, then plugins with the same tags, weighted so rare tags count more than common ones. Plugins by the same author and plugins rated under 4.0 are left out.
How we choose these alternatives
Nothing on this page is picked by hand. Every day we walk the whole WordPress.org directory, then score every plugin against Category Icon on three signals: sharing a category top 10 counts most, then appearing in the same WordPress.org rankings, then carrying the same tags, with rare tags counting for more than common ones like "wordpress". Plugins by the same author are excluded, so an author's own add-ons cannot fill the list, and so is anything rated below 4.0 or with fewer than 100 active installs. The ten highest scores are what you see, in that order. Full methodology.
The bottom line
Taxonomy Images is the closest match to Category Icon by the data we track, and Search & Filter has the widest reach with 50,000+ active installs. Search & Filter shipped the most recent release, on August 22, 2026. The list is rebuilt every day from WordPress.org, so a plugin that stops being maintained drops out on its own.
Weekly · free
What moved this week
One email a week, built from the same daily snapshots these rankings come from: the plugins that climbed, what launched, and one ranking worth a look.