Machete
Machete is a lean and simple suite of tools that solve common WordPress annoyances: cookie bar, tracking codes, header cleanup, social sharing
Safe pick
Yes — Machete is a safe, well-maintained plugin to use in 2026. It runs on 6K+ sites, is rated 5/5 and was last updated 2 months ago, and scores 84/100 on our health check.
- Loved by users — 5/5 from 52 reviews
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Machete stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| analytics | >100 |
| clone | #32 |
| cookies | #27 |
| maintenance | #55 |
| optimization | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
Rating breakdown
★★★★★★★★★★ 5 from 52 reviews
About Machete
From the official readme · v5.3Description
Machete is a simple suite of tools that solves common WordPress annoyances using as few resources as possible. Machete doesn’t cover every single use case, but there is a huge amount of sites that would require less plugins if they used Machete.
All Machete tools have two things in common: they solve problems faced by many web developers and they do it using as few server resources as possible.
So far, Machete includes the following tools:
WordPress Optimization
WordPress places a lot of code inside the <head> tag just to keep backward compatibility or to enable optional features. You can disable most of it and save some time from each page request while making your installation safer.
Cookies & GDPR Warning
We know you hate cookie warning bars. Well, this is the least hateable cookie bar you’ll find. It is really light, doesn’t affect your PageSpeed score and plays well with static cache plugins.
Analytics and custom code
You don’t need a zillion plugins to perform easy tasks like inserting a verification meta tag (Google Search Console, Bing, Pinterest), a json-ld snippet or a custom stylesheet (Google Fonts, Print Styles, accessibility tweaks…).
The Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager tracking codes are PageSpeed optimized, GPDR friendly.
Maintenance mode
The maintenance mode that ships with WordPress is just a basic lock-down that is activated whenever you do a major update. With machete Maintenance Mode you can hide your unfinished page from visitors and search engines, give your clients a secure temporary access and lock your site without affecting your SEO.
Post & Page cloner
Adds a “duplicate” link to post, page and most post types lists. Also adds “copy to new draft” function to the post editor.
Social Sharing Buttons
Social sharing done the Machete way. The icons are made as a custom webfont embedded in a minified CSS file that only weighs 5.8KB. The sharing actions use each platform’s native share URL.
WooCommerce Utils
WooCommerce was designed to work for every possible use case, but that often leads to unexpected behavior. These simple fixes can improve the WooCommerce user experience by making it behave as clients expect.
Installation
- Upload the plugin files to the
/wp-content/plugins/machetedirectory, or install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen directly - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ screen in WordPress
- Configure each tool using the corresponding link on the Machete side menu
Frequently asked questions
Doesn’t plugin X do that better?
Yes, but Machete does it well enough and is probably much lighter.
Is there any set-it-and-forget-it alternative to Machete?
Machete is meant to be used as a development suite. If you are looking for a simpler solution to cut out WordPress bloat, you should have a look at WordPress WPO Tweaks & Optimizations by Fernando Tellado.
Why does WordFence show a warning when I save my options?
Machete caches some of its options to files located in wp-content\uploads\machete\ to speed up loading. This is completely safe, but it’s not a normal WordPress behaviour and it might make plugins like WordFence raise a warning. Just whitelist the action, save again and you’ll be fine.
Why doesn’t Machete have an option to disable Gutenberg?
Like it or not, the WordPress Block Editor (codenamed Gutenberg) is here to stay. Instead of disabling Gutenberg, you should be focusing on updating you workflow to use it. If you need to disable Gutenberg during the transition, you should use the official Classic Editor plugin.
Changelog
5.3
- Security fix: Sanitize cookie bar accent color to prevent stored XSS in generated JavaScript
- New: PowerTools is now a built-in module, disabled by default
- Change: Module storage migrated from
machete_disabled_modulestomachete_enabled_moduleson upgrade - New: PowerTools maintenance actions to purge post revisions, orphaned postmeta, expired cron events, and expired transients with live counters
- New: PowerTools options to show admin list IDs and hide the frontend admin bar for non-administrators
- Improvement: PowerTools maintenance UI redesign with clearer action labels and descriptions
- Fix: PowerTools post revision purge SQL and toolbox select-all checkbox
- Improvement: RSS thumbnails fall back to the first attached image when no featured image is set
- Fix: Disable search option now only affects the frontend main query
- New: Modal confirmation before activating modules marked with a warning
- Improvement: About page warning styling for risky modules and admin notice for the legacy PowerTools activator plugin
5.2
- Checked for compatibility with WordPress 7.0
- Updated minimum WordPress version to 5.9
- Fix: Admin menu icon color now matches WordPress sidebar icons
- Social module: Added missing text domain to share button label
- Improvement: Use random_bytes() for generated filenames and tokens
- Fix: Refactored module translations with a centralized load_i18n() method
- Fix: Load translations for inactive modules on the modules admin page
5.1
- Checked for compatibility with WordPress 6.9
- Cleanup module: Relaxed the function to block the rest-api so it works better with the site editor
- Cleanup module: Added the option to remove the 1536×1536, 2048×2048 thumbnails and big image scaling
- Social module: Replaced the method of getting the share url for a more robust one
- Social module: Shortcode can be used in block templates
- Social module: Accessibility improvements
- Fix: Refactored the plugin modules to avoid triggering the translation checks introduced in WordPress 6.7
- Fix: Minor fixes following Plugin Check Plugin report
- Enhacement: Minor CSS fixes in the plugin backend
- Fix: Enhanced the remove extra sizes function
- Minor changes to adhere to WPCS
5.0.1
- Update: Updated translation files
- Update: Social share module: Updated x.com url for sharing
- Improvement: Manteintenance mode: Added compatibility with custom password recovery URLs
5.0
- Checked for compatibility with WordPress 6.5.x
- Checked for compatibility with WooCommerce 9.0.x
- New: Cookie bar module: accent color option
- Improvement: Cookie bar module: modified the stylesheet to make them easier to override
- New: Maintenance module: added button to copy the magic link
- Update: Analytics and code module: Removed Universal Analytics tracking
- New: Clone module: added clone button to block editor
- Fix: Clone module: fixed loop check for block themes
- Fix: Clone module: added function to fix cloned post title
- Update: Social share module: replaced Twitter with X
- Fix: Social share module: force remove of underline in share buttons
- Fix: Fixed ‘body_class undefined’ warning
- Fix: Fixed some escape functions
- Fix: Added class property declaration to prevent deprecation notice in PHP >8.2
- Fix: Minor coding standards fixes
4.0.3
- Checked for compatibility with WordPress 6.3
- Added SVG icon to the maintenance page, just for the looks
- Changed the Pinterest share URL to prevent redirects
- Cleanup: Removed the option to disable the Contact Form 7 refill (no longer used)
- Cleanup: removed the option to disable the ‘.recentcomments a’ output
- Fix: declared $machete as global to prevent WP-CLI errors (props Armando Lüscher)
Screenshots
For developers
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FAQ
Machete: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 27, 2026
Is Machete free?
Yes. Machete is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Machete safe to use in 2026?
Yes — Machete is a safe, well-maintained plugin to use in 2026. It runs on 6K+ sites, is rated 5/5 and was last updated 2 months ago, and scores 84/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Machete?
Machete is active on 6K+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 94,469 times since it launched in November 2016. It was downloaded 1,016 times in the last 30 days.
Does Machete work with WordPress 7.1?
Machete is officially tested up to WordPress 7.0.6, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
What PHP version does Machete need?
Machete requires PHP 7.4 or higher. Most hosts run PHP 8.x today, so it works on any modern WordPress hosting.
When was Machete last updated?
The latest version, 5.3, was released on August 5, 2026 (2 months ago).
Who makes Machete?
Machete is developed and maintained by Nilo Velez.
What are the best alternatives to Machete?
The most popular alternatives to Machete are Site Kit by Google (5M+ installs), MonsterInsights (2M+ installs) and WP Statistics (600K+ installs).
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