WPThumbs
Themes Plugins By purpose By industry Best-of lists Fix it guides

Best Free WordPress Plugins for Placeholder

14 plugins compared · Updated August 2026 · Placeholder

All 14 Free only Premium only

Choosing a WordPress plugin for placeholder comes down to a few things: whether it is still actively maintained, whether real users rate it well, and whether it does the specific job you need without dragging the rest of the site down.

We ranked 14 plugins using our WPScore, which weighs the user rating (adjusted for how many people actually rated it), how many sites run it, how recently it was updated, and which WordPress version it is tested against. 14 of them have enough public data to be scored; the rest are listed below the ranked block, clearly marked, rather than being given a number we cannot justify.

How this list is funded. Some links here earn us a commission if you buy. It costs you nothing extra, and it does not move anything up the list — the order comes from the WPScore, which is calculated from public ratings, install counts and update history. See the method.

At a glance

  1. 1. Image Placeholders Best overall 86/100
  2. 2. Bulk Page Duplicator 79/100
  3. 3. Post Status Notifier Lite 76/100
  4. 4. Dummy Text Generator 73/100
  5. 5. Lorem Ipsum 68/100
  6. 6. Gravity Forms 52/100
  7. 7. Gravity Forms Placeholder Add-On 49/100
  8. 8. Lorem Ipsum Block 49/100
  9. 9. Placeholder Image for WooCommerce 48/100
  10. 10. Gravity Forms Auto Placeholders 47/100
  11. 11. Dominant Colors Lazy Loading 46/100
  12. 12. Search Placeholder Avada 46/100
  13. 13. Dummy Images 38/100
  14. 14. Lorem Ipsum Blocks 38/100
1 Image Placeholders
Best overall Free by WordPress Performance Team

Image Placeholders

Displays placeholders based on an image's dominant color while the image is loading.

3.5★
from 2 ratings
60k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.1
86

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
2 Bulk Page Duplicator
Free by Nazim Husain

Bulk Page Duplicator

Create pages and posts in bulk from one template with smart placeholder replacement, dry run preview, CSV import, and rollback history.

5★
from 2 ratings
400+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.4
79

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
4 Dummy Text Generator
Free by Md. Naeem Ahmed Opu

Dummy Text Generator

Generate Lorem Ipsum text and placeholder images anywhere on your site using simple shortcodes — with full control over paragraph count, image size, a …

5★
from 2 ratings
100+
active installs
Updated
May 2026
Tested to
WP 6.9.7
73

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
5 Lorem Ipsum
Free by Plugin Pizza

Lorem Ipsum

Quickly insert lorem ipsum dummy text or placeholder images via autocompletion in the block editor.

100+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.4
68

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
6 Gravity Forms
Free by neojp

Gravity Forms

Adds HTML5 placeholder support to Gravity Forms' fields with a Javascript fallback. Javascript & jQuery are required.

4.9★
from 24 ratings
2k+
active installs
Updated
Nov 2017
Tested to
WP 3.4.2
52

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
11 Dominant Colors Lazy Loading
Free by manuelwieser

Dominant Colors Lazy Loading

This plugin allows you to lazy load your images while showing the dominant color of each image as a placeholder – like Pinterest or Google Images.

5★
from 2 ratings
100+
active installs
Updated
Dec 2018
Tested to
WP 5.0.27
46

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org