Better Font Awesome

82 Quality Score

Active Installs

21/30

Roughly 70,000 active installs and a 30-point overshoot on the popularity score make this a well-known but not dominant plugin in its niche.

Update Freshness

25/25

The plugin was last updated on 2025-02-12 and is tested up to WordPress 6.7.5, but no PHP version requirement is declared and the maintenance score of 38 signals concerns about long-term platform alignment.

User Rating

14/15

A 92 out of 100 from 85 raters is a strong showing and indicates satisfied users, though the small sample size limits how much weight that signal carries.

Support Health

8/15

Zero support threads opened and zero resolved is suspicious: it may mean the plugin is stable, but it also means there is no visible track record of responsive help.

WP Compatibility

15/15

It requires WordPress 3.0 or later, which is the lowest possible bar, and no PHP minimum is set, so compatibility looks broad but unverified against modern PHP stacks.

Scores higher than 89% of indexed plugins

About

Add Font Awesome Free icons that stay current automatically, with a native WordPress block, shortcodes, a Classic Editor picker, and legacy support.

Active Installs 60k+

Rating ★★★★½ 4.5/5

Last Updated 2026-09-10 4:23pm GMT

Requires WordPress 6.5+

Tested Up To 7.1

Requires PHP 7.4+

Security History

3 known vulnerabilities, all patched

1 High 2 Medium

Most recent: January 18, 2023

View details ▸

What It Does

Better Font Awesome lets you embed Font Awesome icons into WordPress content using shortcodes, plain HTML, or the TinyMCE editor. It supports multiple Font Awesome versions, including legacy releases for backward compatibility, and serves icons via CDN for faster page loads. The plugin handles versioning, shortcode parsing, and rendering so you do not have to enqueue stylesheets manually.

Who It's For

This plugin fits content-heavy WordPress sites, blogs, portfolios, and small business pages that lean on icons for navigation, calls to action, or visual flavour. It is a good pick for users who want a flexible shortcode or HTML workflow rather than a block-based icon editor. Designers and agencies maintaining client sites that still depend on older Font Awesome versions will also appreciate its backward compatibility.

Who Should Skip It

If your theme or page builder already ships with Font Awesome baked in, installing this plugin is redundant and may cause duplicate icon font loads. Elementor and full-site editing users who prefer native icon blocks do not need this layer of tooling.

The Bottom Line

Better Font Awesome scores 60.15 out of 100 on PluginCheck, weighed down by weak maintenance and support signals despite strong user ratings. It remains a competent choice for shortcode-driven Font Awesome embedding, especially on legacy or custom-built sites. Users on modern page builders will usually be better served by a block or builder-native alternative.

Pick this if you build with Elementor and want 14,000+ icons loaded directly into the Elementor icon picker without shortcodes.

Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator 86/100

Choose this when favicons and app icons are your primary need rather than in-content icon typography.

Font Awesome 83/100

Pick the official Font Awesome plugin when you want the source-of-truth integration maintained by the Font Awesome team with newer 6.x features.

The Icon Block 83/100

Choose this if you prefer a clean Gutenberg block interface for inserting icons rather than shortcodes or raw HTML.

Icon Element 81/100

Pick this for an Elementor-flavoured icon pack with 6,700+ glyphs and tighter integration with Elementor widgets.