10 Best Colorful Categories Alternatives in 2026
Updated September 7, 2026 · Ranked by how closely each plugin matches, from WordPress.org data · How this works
Colorful Categories 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 Colorful Categories
- 1
Collapsing Categories
Closest match4.1 (57) 4,000+ active installsAdds a widget which uses Javascript to dynamically expand or collapse the set of posts for each category.
Shares the categories, widget tags on WordPress.org. About 2 times the installs, last updated February 12, 2026.
- 2
4.6 (57) 7,000+ active installsAn advanced posts display widget with many options. Display posts in your sidebars any way you'd like!
Shares the categories, widget tags on WordPress.org. About 3.5 times the installs, no update since November 28, 2017.
- 3
4.8 (25) 3,000+ active installsDisplay Categories Widget will display Child categories on your sidebar. Can be placed on widget in sidebar.
Shares the categories, widget tags on WordPress.org. About 1.5 times the installs, no update since November 3, 2019.
- 4
5.0 (41) 8,000+ active installsThis plugin allows you to use unfiltered HTML in your category descriptions by disabling selected WordPress filters.
Shares the categories tag on WordPress.org. About 4 times the installs, last updated March 5, 2026.
- 5
5.0 (23) 5,000+ active installsPreserves the category hierarchy on the post editing screen
Shares the categories tag on WordPress.org. About 2.5 times the installs, no update since November 28, 2017.
- 6
4.4 (23) 20,000+ active installsThis is a fix of Top Level Categories plugin for Wordpress 3.1. and above.
Shares the categories tag on WordPress.org. About 10 times the installs, no update since September 3, 2025.
- 7
4.8 (23) 20,000+ active installsAdds the built in WordPress categories and tags to your pages.
Shares the categories tag on WordPress.org. About 10 times the installs, last updated January 7, 2026.
- 8
5.0 (21) 10,000+ active installsReplaces the plain-text category and tag description editor with a visual editor.
Shares the categories tag on WordPress.org. About 5 times the installs, no update since August 17, 2024.
- 9
4.2 (52) 20,000+ active installsAdds the ability to use categories in the media library.
Shares the categories tag on WordPress.org. About 10 times the installs, last updated 16 days ago.
- 10
4.1 (29) 10,000+ active installsHide Categories and Products for Woocommerce. This plugins requires WooCommerce to be installed and activated
Shares the categories tag on WordPress.org. About 5 times the installs, last updated April 29, 2026.
Switching from Colorful Categories: common questions
What is the best alternative to Colorful Categories?
Collapsing Categories is the closest match: it shares the same WordPress.org tags and has 4,000+ active installs with a 4.1 out of 5 rating.
Which Colorful Categories alternative has the most users?
FV Top Level Categories, with 20,000+ active installs reported by WordPress.org.
Which Colorful Categories alternative is rated highest?
Flexible Posts Widget, rated 4.6 out of 5 by 57 reviewers. Only plugins with at least 50 reviews are counted.
Are these Colorful Categories 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 Colorful Categories 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 Colorful Categories 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
Collapsing Categories is the closest match to Colorful Categories by the data we track, and FV Top Level Categories has the widest reach with 20,000+ active installs. Media Library Categories 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.