Best WooCommerce age verification plugins compared

The most-installed age verification plugin for WordPress has around 40,000 active installations, a 4.6 rating, and has not shipped an update since 22 October 2025. Its listing declares compatibility only up to WordPress 6.8.6. WordPress is on 7.0.2.

That is Age Gate, and none of this is a criticism of its code. It is a warning about how this category is usually compared. Install counts are cumulative and lag reality by years; a plugin can be the most popular option and the least currently maintained one at the same time.

Why staleness matters more here than on Shopify

A Shopify app runs on Shopify's infrastructure, talks to your store through a scoped API, and cannot execute code on your server. A WordPress plugin runs inside your PHP process with the privileges of your site. It can read your database, write files, and see everything that passes through checkout.

So the last-updated date is not housekeeping. An abandoned plugin sitting on a checkout page is a different class of exposure from an abandoned app, and the plugin directory publishes exactly the two fields you need to assess it: when the author last shipped, and which WordPress version they claim to have tested.

Both fields are in the table below, taken from the WordPress.org plugin API on 5 August 2026.

Age Verification System for WooCommerce last shipped in July 2024 and is tested to WordPress 6.6.5 — four minor releases and a major behind. A two-year gap on a plugin that sits in a purchase flow is the single clearest disqualifier in the table.

ProofAge, ours, declares tested up to 6.9.5 rather than 7.0.2. That is one release behind, it is our own listing, and it is fixable rather than excusable. Stating it here is the point of publishing a comparison at all.

The two categories, again

As on Shopify, this list contains two products under one search term.

Age gates put a date-of-birth box or a yes/no modal in front of the store. Age Gate, Age Gate Lite and Easy Age Verify are in this group, and between them they hold nearly all the installs in the category. What they record is that a visitor clicked.

Ofcom's guidance on age assurance places self-declaration of age among the methods that are not highly effective, and FDA's Tobacco 21 requirement is implemented through 21 CFR 1140.14, which calls for verification by photographic identification for any purchaser not over 29. A gate does not satisfy either. It deters, it signals, and in most regulated categories that is where its usefulness ends.

Document checks connect the store to a verification service that reads an identity document. AgeChecker.net, Token of Trust, Identity Verification for WooCommerce and ProofAge are in this group, and their combined install base is smaller than Age Gate's by a factor of about fifty. That ratio describes demand for free plugins, not the state of the law.

Where in the flow the check runs

The other axis nobody compares on, and the one that decides your bill.

On page load, site-wide. The classic gate. It fires for every visitor, including the ones who never buy, which is fine when the check is free and ruinous when it is not. It also produces nothing attached to an order, so it cannot answer a question about a specific transaction.

At checkout, before payment. The check runs on people who are actually buying. Verification cost concentrates on customers rather than traffic, and the result can be stamped onto the order — which is the artefact an audit asks for.

After the order, as a hold. The order is placed, then released once the buyer verifies. Fewer checkout drop-offs, but you now have a queue of unfulfilled orders and a customer who has paid for something you may not be able to ship.

Most of the free gates are in the first group by design. Most of the document checks sit in the second or third, and it is worth asking a vendor which, because the difference between paying per visitor and paying per buyer is usually an order of magnitude.

One WooCommerce-specific compatibility check while you are in the listing: confirm the plugin declares support for High-Performance Order Storage. Anything that reads or writes order data and has not been updated for it is working against WooCommerce's current default.

What the checking plugins cost

The plugin is free in every case here; the verification service behind it is not. Only some vendors publish what it costs.

Note the shape of the Token of Trust card, because it makes the general point better than any argument: the age tier is $0.50 a check, and the tier that adds KYC and AML screening is $1.54. Three times the price for capabilities an age gate never invokes. If you are buying identity verification to answer an age question, that multiple is what you are paying.

On these published rates ProofAge is the lowest of the three on both the monthly base and the per-check rate. All figures were taken from each vendor's own page on 5 August 2026.

Where ProofAge sits, with the weak part included

Cheapest published rate in the group, white-label so the buyer stays inside your checkout under your branding, billed per verified buyer rather than per order, and 29 languages.

Against that: under 10 active installs and no ratings. Age Gate has 40,000 installs and four thousand times our adoption. If your selection criterion is how many other stores already made this choice, that comparison is not close, and pretending otherwise would make everything else here less believable. What the install count does not tell you is whether the plugin produces a record you can put in front of a regulator, because the plugins holding those installs never see a document.

How to choose

• Read the last-updated date first. Anything over a year old on a checkout page is a security decision, not a feature trade-off.
• Check the tested-up-to header against the current WordPress release, and treat a two-major gap as a red flag on any plugin, including ours.
• Decide whether you need a deterrent or evidence. A gate cannot be configured into a document check.
• Price the service, not the plugin. The download is free everywhere; the verifications are the cost.
• Do not buy KYC to answer an age question. The published rate cards show the premium plainly.
• Install, place one real order, then go find the record. If you would not hand it to a regulator, the plugin has not solved your problem.

Directory figures come from the WordPress.org plugin API and pricing from each vendor's own pages, all on 5 August 2026. Install counts are bucketed by WordPress and ratings move slowly; the last-updated column is the one worth re-checking before you commit.