Worth The Read

76 Quality Score

Active Installs

16/30

With about 3,000 active installs it is a mid-tier niche plugin, well behind most of its listed alternatives but not obscure.

Update Freshness

25/25

It was updated on 2024-12-03 and explicitly tested with WordPress 6.7.5, which is recent enough to suggest the author is still maintaining it.

User Rating

13/15

A score of 86 out of 100 from 27 ratings is strong, though the small sample size means the picture could shift quickly with a few new reviews.

Support Health

8/15

There are zero support threads in the record, which gives it a neutral 50 rather than a penalty, but it also means there is no public track record of the author answering issues.

WP Compatibility

15/15

It requires only WordPress 3.8 and PHP was not specified, so it should run on just about any modern WP install, though that very low floor also signals it has not been formally validated against recent PHP versions.

Scores higher than 49% of indexed plugins

About

An adjustable progress meter showing how much of the post/page the user has scrolled through, and a read time commitment label near the post titles.

Active Installs 3k+

Rating ★★★★ 4.3/5

Last Updated 2026-08-26 1:00pm GMT

Requires WordPress 3.8+

Tested Up To 7.1

Security History

2 known vulnerabilities, all patched

2 Medium

Most recent: December 16, 2022

View details ▸

What It Does

Worth The Read adds a thin progress bar that fills as a visitor scrolls down a post or page, giving a visual cue of how much content remains. It also displays a small read-time label near post titles so readers can gauge the time commitment before they click in.

Who It's For

This plugin suits bloggers, journalists, and publishers of long-form or text-heavy content (think essays, feature articles, tutorials, and educational posts) where readers benefit from knowing how far along they are and how much time an article will take. It is also a reasonable fit for content marketing teams that want to signal commitment length on cornerstone articles.

Who Should Skip It

If your site is built around very short posts, image galleries, or product pages, the read-time label and progress bar will add little value and may feel like clutter. Sites that already use a full-featured reading experience plugin should avoid stacking this on top.

The Bottom Line

Worth The Read does one focused job and does it well enough that 27 reviewers gave it an 86/100 average, so the core functionality is solid. However, the 49.91/100 PluginCheck score is dragged down by thin support data and an unusually low minimum WordPress requirement that suggests light modernization, so treat it as a reasonable but not standout choice.

Pick this instead if your scroll-related need is specifically inside the admin Media Library rather than on the public reading experience.

Reading progressbar 79/100

Pick this if you only want the scroll progress bar and prefer a plugin with double the install base (6,000) and a higher overall quality score.

Catch Infinite Scroll 78/100

Pick this if your goal is infinite scrolling on archive pages or the front end, which is a different feature from a reading progress indicator.

T4B News Ticker 78/100

Pick this if you actually want scrolling news tickers, sliders, or animated headlines, not a reader-facing progress bar.

WP Reading Progress 78/100

Pick this if you want a dedicated reading progress plugin that matches Worth The Read on installs (3,000) but scores noticeably higher overall.