Disclosure: we make BD Security Firewall. We’re including it in this roundup because we’d be obviously dishonest not to — but we’re scoring it on the same rubric as the others, and we’ll point out where competitors win. If you only want the ranking and not the reasoning, scroll to the bottom table. If you want to understand the tradeoffs, read through.
How we scored
Ten criteria, scored 1–5, applied identically:
- Price — what you actually pay per site per year
- Self-hosted vs SaaS — does data leave your server?
- WAF presence — endpoint, cloud, or both
- Brute-force protection — login lockout, IP blocking
- 2FA — TOTP, email OTP, backup codes
- File integrity monitoring — checksum verification against canonical
- Performance impact — resource cost on shared hosting
- False-positive risk — how often legitimate traffic gets blocked
- GDPR / data-residency posture — does the plugin make EU compliance easier or harder?
- Support quality — based on public documentation and response time claims
Scores are our reading of public documentation, pricing pages, and (for plugins we actually run) hands-on use. Where we couldn’t test directly, we say so. Pricing as of May 2026; check vendor sites for current.
The five plugins
1. Wordfence
The default. Largest install base, oldest commercial vendor, dedicated security research team at parent company Defiant.
| Criterion | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 3/5 | Free tier exists; Premium $149/yr per site |
| Self-hosted vs SaaS | 3/5 | Plugin runs on your server; firewall rules and threat data come from Wordfence cloud |
| WAF | 4/5 | Endpoint WAF, mature rule set |
| Brute-force protection | 5/5 | Comprehensive — lockout, country block, login throttling |
| 2FA | 4/5 | TOTP supported via separate Wordfence Login Security plugin |
| File integrity monitoring | 5/5 | Checksums vs canonical, plus plugin/theme integrity |
| Performance impact | 2/5 | Widely reported as resource-heavy, particularly during scans and live traffic view |
| False-positive risk | 3/5 | Large rule set means occasional false positives; well-documented exceptions |
| GDPR posture | 2/5 | Cloud data processing requires DPA + US transfer disclosure |
| Support | 4/5 | Premium ticket support; community forum for free |
Where Wordfence wins: the threat intelligence pipeline. Defiant publishes CVEs, runs a vulnerability disclosure program, and pushes new rules to paid users immediately. If a zero-day drops in a popular plugin, Wordfence Premium users are often protected within hours.
Where it loses: weight, cloud dependency, the 30-day rule delay on the free tier (paying users get rules immediately; free users wait 30 days, which is a real security gap), and price at scale.
Pick if: you want maximum vendor-backed threat intel and you have headroom on your server.
2. Sucuri
Sucuri is a different animal. Their core product is a cloud-based Website Firewall — your traffic routes through Sucuri’s proxy before reaching your origin. The WordPress plugin is a free helper that hooks into their platform.
| Criterion | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 2/5 | Platform plans start $229/yr Basic to $549/yr Business; cloud firewall $9.99–$19.98/mo separately |
| Self-hosted vs SaaS | 1/5 | Cloud-first; traffic routes through Sucuri proxy |
| WAF | 5/5 | True cloud WAF — blocks before reaching your origin |
| Brute-force protection | 4/5 | Handled at the proxy layer |
| 2FA | 3/5 | Available, not the main pitch |
| File integrity monitoring | 4/5 | Yes, via the plugin component |
| Performance impact | 4/5 | Cloud WAF can actually speed your site (cached at edge); the plugin is light |
| False-positive risk | 3/5 | Proxy-layer blocks can be confusing to debug |
| GDPR posture | 2/5 | Cloud processing, US-based; CDN component complicates compliance further |
| Support | 5/5 | Incident response is the entire point — included in plans, with response-time SLAs |
Where Sucuri wins: if you suspect or know you’re under active attack, the cloud WAF + included unlimited malware removal is a different product category than what plugin-only vendors offer. Their incident response is the gold standard.
Where it loses: price. $229/yr Basic for a single site is a different budget conversation. Also: routing traffic through any third party is a non-starter for sites with strict data residency requirements.
Pick if: you’ve been hacked before, you can afford it, and you want incident response baked in.
3. Solid Security (formerly iThemes Security)
Rebranded after the SolidWP acquisition. As of 2026, SolidWP has been folded into Liquid Web’s Kadence ecosystem — the standalone “Solid Security Pro” tier is gone. The plugin is now bundled into Kadence Pro at $299/year, which packages Security (firewall, 2FA, Patchstack integration) together with daily backups, ShopKit for WooCommerce, performance optimization, and memberships. The free Solid Security plugin remains on wordpress.org.
| Criterion | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 2/5 | Free tier remains; paid version only available bundled in Kadence Pro at $299/yr (full stack — you can no longer buy just the security plugin) |
| Self-hosted vs SaaS | 4/5 | Mostly self-hosted; paid Patchstack integration is a cloud lookup |
| WAF | 3/5 | Has firewall rules but less prominent than Wordfence’s |
| Brute-force protection | 5/5 | Excellent — banned users, network brute force protection |
| 2FA | 5/5 | TOTP, backup codes, supported for all user roles in the paid bundle |
| File integrity monitoring | 4/5 | File change detection included |
| Performance impact | 4/5 | Lighter than Wordfence based on general community reports |
| False-positive risk | 4/5 | Conservative defaults |
| GDPR posture | 4/5 | Mostly local; Patchstack lookups are EU-hosted |
| Support | 4/5 | Premium support via Liquid Web |
Where Solid Security wins: 2FA implementation is the cleanest of any plugin we tested. If you manage a site with many editors and you need to roll out 2FA across roles, this is the easier ride. If you also want the rest of the Kadence stack (commerce, memberships, backups), the $299 bundle is decent value.
Where it loses: you can no longer buy the security plugin alone — you’re paying for the full Kadence stack whether you want it or not. WAF feels secondary to the login hardening focus. If you want a serious endpoint firewall and nothing else, this isn’t your first pick.
Pick if: you’re already on Kadence (or planning to be) and the bundle math works out, or your main worry is account compromise rather than direct firewall attacks.
4. MalCare
Scanning-focused. Their pitch is that scanning happens on their cloud servers, not yours — so the resource cost lives on their infrastructure, not your shared host.
| Criterion | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 3/5 | Tiered per-site plans up to Protect+ at $299/yr (frequently discounted to $179/yr with promos) |
| Self-hosted vs SaaS | 1/5 | Scanning happens on MalCare cloud — your files are sent to them |
| WAF | 4/5 | Has WAF component |
| Brute-force protection | 4/5 | Standard |
| 2FA | 3/5 | Available, not headlined |
| File integrity monitoring | 4/5 | Yes, runs on their cloud |
| Performance impact | 5/5 | This is the pitch — almost zero server-side scan cost |
| False-positive risk | 3/5 | Couldn’t test directly; community reports mixed |
| GDPR posture | 1/5 | Your file contents are uploaded to their cloud for analysis |
| Support | 4/5 | Auto-removal is a real differentiator |
Where MalCare wins: if your problem is “my shared host is dying every time the scanner runs,” shifting scan compute to their cloud genuinely solves that. Auto-removal of detected malware is convenient.
Where it loses: uploading site files to a third party is a GDPR question you have to answer honestly. For some sites that’s fine; for some it’s disqualifying.
Pick if: scanning resource cost is your blocker and you’re comfortable with the data-handling tradeoff.
5. BD Security Firewall (us)
What we shipped, scored against the same rubric. We tried to be fair.
| Criterion | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 5/5 | $49/yr per site flat; no auto-renewal trap; All-in-One bundle on pricing page |
| Self-hosted vs SaaS | 5/5 | Fully self-hosted; zero outbound API calls except daily license check |
| WAF | 3/5 | Endpoint WAF with OWASP-pattern blocks; rule set smaller than Wordfence |
| Brute-force protection | 4/5 | 3 attempts / 60 min lockout, configurable |
| 2FA | 5/5 | TOTP + Email OTP both built-in, with backup codes |
| File integrity monitoring | 4/5 | Available via BD Malware Cleaner (separate plugin); uses canonical WP checksums |
| Performance impact | 4/5 | Light — no live traffic stream, no real-time IP polling |
| False-positive risk | 3/5 | Narrower rule set means fewer false positives, but also fewer caught attacks if your threat model needs more signatures |
| GDPR posture | 5/5 | Self-hosted, no DPA needed, no third-country transfer |
| Support | 3/5 | Email support 48h; we’re a small team, no incident response service |
Where we win: price, GDPR posture, self-hosted purity, dual 2FA methods (TOTP and Email OTP both, which most competitors don’t ship together).
Where we lose: rule library size, threat-research depth, support depth (we’re not a 24/7 SOC). If you want a vendor with researchers publishing CVEs every week, that’s Wordfence, not us. If you want incident response on retainer, that’s Sucuri.
Plugins we considered but didn’t include
- All in One WP Security & Firewall — broad feature set; free; less commercial backing than the five above
- Jetpack Protect — included with Jetpack; bundled, harder to evaluate in isolation
- Shield Security — solid plugin; smaller install base; we hadn’t tested it in depth
- Cloudflare — not a WordPress plugin; if you want true cloud WAF without Sucuri, this is your first stop
We’d rather list five we know than ten we half-know.
Side-by-side rubric
Sum of all 10 criteria, max 50. Higher is not necessarily “best” — it’s best across this rubric. If your single criterion is “I want the deepest threat research,” Wordfence wins regardless of total.
| Plugin | Total | Strongest at | Weakest at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wordfence | 35 | File integrity, brute force | Performance, GDPR |
| Sucuri | 33 | Cloud WAF, support | Price, self-hosted |
| Solid Security | 40 | 2FA, brute force | WAF depth |
| MalCare | 32 | Performance offload | Self-hosted, GDPR |
| BD Security Firewall | 41 | Price, GDPR, self-hosted | WAF rule library size, support depth |
If we’d come in last on our own rubric, we’d have shipped this post anyway and rethought the product. We didn’t, but the criteria favor self-hosted plugins by design — that’s a bias worth naming.
How to actually choose
Forget the totals. Answer these in order:
- Are you under active attack right now? Pick Sucuri. Their incident response is what you need.
- Do you have many editor-role users and 2FA rollout is the priority? Pick Solid Security.
- Is your shared host dying when scans run, and you don’t mind cloud file analysis? Pick MalCare.
- Do you want the largest threat-intel pipeline and your server has headroom? Pick Wordfence.
- Do you want self-hosted, GDPR-clean, predictable per-site pricing on multiple sites? That’s us — try BD Security Firewall for $49/yr with a 30-day refund.
There is no universally best WordPress security plugin. There’s the right tool for your threat model, your budget, and your data-handling constraints.
What we’d do at different site sizes
- One brochure site, low budget: Wordfence Free + accept the 30-day rule delay. Or our $49.
- One business site, medium budget: Wordfence Premium ($149) or BD Security Firewall ($49). Both work.
- One e-commerce site, high stakes: Sucuri Platform + Cloudflare in front. Don’t cheap out here.
- 10+ client sites, agency: Per-site math matters. The BD All-in-One bundle covers 10 sites for one price across all our plugins (firewall, malware, backup, etc.) — usually cheaper than stacking individual plugin licenses.
That recommendation isn’t because we wrote this post. It’s because the per-site economics genuinely flip at agency scale. Wordfence Premium at $118/site/yr volume × 10 sites = $1,180. Our $49/site flat × 10 = $490, and the bundle is cheaper still.
Closing
If you’ve been running a WordPress site for more than two years, you’ve been attacked. The question is whether you noticed and whether the plugin you trusted caught it.
There’s no plugin that catches 100% of attacks. There’s no plugin that’s right for 100% of sites. There is, for each site, a sensible choice based on what you’re protecting and what you can afford.
If you’d like to try ours: BD Security Firewall on its own, or the All-in-One bundle for the full ten-plugin set. 30-day refund either way.
If after reading this you decide a competitor is the better fit, that’s a fine outcome. We’d rather you pick correctly than pick us.
Last updated: May 2026. Pricing and features change; verify on vendor sites before committing.
