6 Best Meow Lightbox Alternatives in 2026
Updated October 22, 2026 · Ranked by how closely each plugin matches, from WordPress.org data · How this works
Meow Lightbox has 10,000+ active installs on WordPress.org. These 6 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 6 closest alternatives to Meow Lightbox
- 1
Photoswipe Masonry
Closest match4.5 (46) 6,000+ active installsPhotoSwipe Masonry takes advantage of the built in gallery features of WordPress. The gallery is built using PhotoSwipe from Dmitry Semenov.
Shares the lightbox, photoswipe tags on WordPress.org. About half the installs, last updated 8 days ago.
- 2
4.9 (115) 20,000+ active installsIntegration of PhotoSwipe (http://photoswipe.com) for WordPress.
Shares the lightbox, photoswipe tags on WordPress.org. About 2 times the installs, last updated August 30, 2026.
- 3
4.3 (239) 100,000+ active installsThe highly customizable lightbox for WordPress
Shares the lightbox, photography tags on WordPress.org. About 10 times the installs, rated 4.3 against 4.9, last updated September 12, 2026.
- 4
WooSwipe WooCommerce Gallery
4.5 (39) 3,000+ active installsA WooCommerce product gallery built with PhotoSwipe and Slick carousel — responsive, touch-friendly, and easy to customise.
Shares the photoswipe tag on WordPress.org. About a third of the installs, last updated 9 days ago.
- 5
picu
Paid version availablepicu – Online Photo Proofing Gallery
4.7 (55) 2,000+ active installsPhoto proofing for professional photographers: Send a collection of photographs to your clients for approval.
Shares the photography tag on WordPress.org. About a quarter of the installs, rated 4.7 against 4.9, last updated 21 days ago.
- 6
4.6 (30) 2,000+ active installsEasy Photography Portfolio is an elegant portfolio gallery plugin designed for Photographers. Install the plugin, add portfolio entries and galleries …
Shares the photography tag on WordPress.org. About a quarter of the installs, no update since February 27, 2021.
Switching from Meow Lightbox: common questions
What is the best alternative to Meow Lightbox?
Photoswipe Masonry is the closest match: it shares the same WordPress.org tags and has 6,000+ active installs with a 4.5 out of 5 rating.
Which Meow Lightbox alternative has the most users?
Simple Lightbox, with 100,000+ active installs reported by WordPress.org.
Which Meow Lightbox alternative is rated highest?
Lightbox with PhotoSwipe, rated 4.9 out of 5 by 115 reviewers. Only plugins with at least 50 reviews are counted.
Are these Meow Lightbox 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 Meow Lightbox 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 Meow Lightbox 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
Photoswipe Masonry is the closest match to Meow Lightbox by the data we track, and Simple Lightbox has the widest reach with 100,000+ active installs. Photoswipe Masonry shipped the most recent release, on October 14, 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.