5 Best Web Stories Alternatives in 2026
Updated September 7, 2026 · Ranked by how closely each plugin matches, from WordPress.org data · How this works
Web Stories has 60,000+ active installs on WordPress.org. These 5 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 5 closest alternatives to Web Stories
- 1
MakeStories
Closest matchMakeStories (for Google Web Stories)
4.3 (28) 600+ active installsMakeStories helper plugin to publish stories for your WordPress site
Shares the amp, stories, web stories tags on WordPress.org. 600+ installs against 60,000+, last updated July 8, 2026.
- 2
4.9 (735) 200,000+ active installsHead and Footer plugin lets you to add HTML code to the head and footer sections of your site pages, inside posts... and more!
Shares the amp tag on WordPress.org. About 3.3 times the installs, rated 4.9 against 4.2, last updated March 28, 2026.
- 3
Ad Inserter – Ad Manager & AdSense Ads
4.9 (2,428) 300,000+ active installsManage Google AdSense ads, banners, ad rotation, sticky widgets, AMP ads, ads.txt, tracking, header and footer code, PHP code, global custom fields
Shares the amp tag on WordPress.org. About 5 times the installs, rated 4.9 against 4.2, last updated July 27, 2026.
- 4
AMP for WP – Accelerated Mobile Pages
4.4 (1,317) 70,000+ active installsAMP for WP is the most recommended AMP plugin by the community. Automatically add Accelerated Mobile Pages (Google AMP Project) functionality on your …
Shares the amp tag on WordPress.org. A similar number of installs, rated 4.4 against 4.2, last updated 5 days ago.
- 5
4.5 (252) 100,000+ active installsSchema & Structured Data adds Google Rich Snippets markup according to Schema.org guidelines to structure your site for SEO.
Shares the amp tag on WordPress.org. About 1.7 times the installs, rated 4.5 against 4.2, last updated 11 days ago.
Switching from Web Stories: common questions
What is the best alternative to Web Stories?
MakeStories is the closest match: it shares the same WordPress.org tags and has 600+ active installs with a 4.3 out of 5 rating.
Which Web Stories alternative has the most users?
Ad Inserter, with 300,000+ active installs reported by WordPress.org.
Which Web Stories alternative is rated highest?
Ad Inserter, rated 4.9 out of 5 by 2,428 reviewers. Only plugins with at least 50 reviews are counted.
Are these Web Stories 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 Web Stories 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 Web Stories 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
MakeStories is the closest match to Web Stories by the data we track, and Ad Inserter has the widest reach with 300,000+ active installs. Accelerated Mobile Pages shipped the most recent release, on September 2, 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.