Roles & Capabilities
by Ariel · WordPress.org page · Website
Roles & Capabilities has 1,000+ active installs on WordPress.org and 33,580 downloads all time. We have tracked it since September 4, 2026; download trends appear after 30 days of data. The last update was on December 19, 2025, tested up to WordPress 6.9.7.
Roles & Capabilities at a glance
Is Roles & Capabilities well maintained?
Features
The feature list from the plugin's own readme on WordPress.org, trimmed to the essentials.
- Create and manage custom roles
- Edit role names and assign or remove capabilities
- Clone existing roles for faster setup
- Grant or revoke capabilities for individual users
- Create and assign new custom capabilities
- Remove user-defined capabilities when no longer needed
Roles & Capabilities reviews and ratings
7 reviews on WordPress.org, with the most recent ones as their authors posted them.
7 reviews
- 5★
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- 4★
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- 2★
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- 1★
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Worked well for API user limitation
Worked well for what we used it for. Needed specific permissions for an API user having to place Orders in WooCommerce.
mindflow -
Simple and effective
This plugin is exactly in line with I think plugins should be: clear, one task only, well integrated without bloat meaningless UI elements that do nothing. That's what I do with my plugins as well.
Vitor Carvalho -
Simple and efficient
I just needed to add the capabilities for specific users to edit the pages they own, which is not possible with the default Author role. This plugin made it really easy: I could clone the Author role into an "Author++" role with a bunch of additional capabilities and it was enough to let users edit their page, without giving them the much more powerful Editor role. Capabilities needed for this were: edit_pages edit_private_pages edit_published_pages publish_pages Thank you a lot!
dece2814 -
The best plugin for delete unwanted capabilities
finally! Thank you so much for this! After testing several very complex and confusing user role plugins (which by the way just added more garbage to my wp_options table), I found "Roles & Capabilities". It was all I needed to get rid of more than half the weight of the option "wp_user_roles" in the table "wp_options" that slowed down my wp-admin.
moisb -
Great & simple plugin
keep up the good work. thank you so much for your hard work.
dilszhan -
A hidden gem
Coming from 'Members' which got bloated, this is just one of those hidden gems in the wordpress repository that is simple, clean bloatfree and just works. Keep it up. :)
rehhoff
Roles & Capabilities alternatives
Plugins that solve the same problem, ranked by how closely they overlap with Roles & Capabilities.
-
PublishPress Permissions 10,000+ installs · 4.3 -
Simple Client Dashboard 2,000+ installs · 4.5 -
Tabify Edit Screen 500+ installs · 4.9 -
Members 300,000+ installs · 4.9 -
PublishPress Capabilities 100,000+ installs · 4.7
Details
Take full control of user roles and capabilities in WordPress with an intuitive, powerful interface.
The full description, screenshots and every review live on the WordPress.org page.
Tags
- admin
- capabilities
- edit
- permissions
- role
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- Version
- 1.1.14
- Last updated
- Dec 19, 2025
- First published
- Aug 28, 2019
- Requires WordPress
- 4.1
- Tested up to
- 6.9.7
- Requires PHP
- 7.4
- Pricing
- Free on WordPress.org
Roles & Capabilities FAQ
What does Roles & Capabilities do?
According to its WordPress.org readme, Roles & Capabilities offers Create and manage custom roles, Edit role names and assign or remove capabilities, Clone existing roles for faster setup, Grant or revoke capabilities for individual users and Create and assign new custom capabilities.
How many active installs does Roles & Capabilities have?
WordPress.org reports 1,000+ active installs for Roles & Capabilities as of September 7, 2026.
Is Roles & Capabilities still maintained?
Yes. The last release was on December 19, 2025 and it is tested up to WordPress 6.9.7.
Is Roles & Capabilities free?
Roles & Capabilities is free to install from WordPress.org. Many plugins also sell a paid version or add-ons.