Best bbPress Voting Plugins (2026)

I have spent the last several weeks auditing every WordPress plugin that promises to add voting to a bbPress forum. Most of them do not actually do what the title says — they bolt a generic like button onto a forum and call it a day. This post is a transparent look at all of them, what each one really does, and which one is the right fit for your forum in 2026.

Since I build bbPress Voting and bbPress Voting Pro, I am biased. You should treat this list the way you would treat a competitive breakdown from any vendor: a starting point for your own comparison, not the final word. The plugin data below was pulled live from the WordPress.org plugin API and from each vendor’s pricing page on September 1, 2026.

The Short List

Here is every plugin I found that is actively maintained and meaningfully interacts with bbPress forums. I have grouped them by intent: purpose-built bbPress voting, broad post-rating plugins that also work on forums, and SaaS-style like buttons.

A few things jump out of that table. The only other purpose-built bbPress voting plugin with active development is GD Topic Polls (topicPolls Pro), and it is built around polls rather than free-form upvotes and downvotes. Everything else either bolts a post-rating system onto the forum or wraps a voting feature inside a larger forum suite. Two of the seven are stale: DA Reactions has not been updated in over 12 months.

bbPress-Native Voting Plugins (purpose-built)

GD Topic Polls (topicPolls Pro)

GD Topic Polls is the only other bbPress-native option worth serious consideration. The core plugin on WordPress.org is free and lets bbPress topic authors attach a poll to their topic. Voting is poll-based, not free-form upvote/downvote on every reply.

The paid topicPolls Pro add-on extends this into per-reply voting, but the design center is still polls, not Reddit-style voting. If you want “Which is the best X?” with discrete choices, this is the right plugin. If you want every topic and reply to be upvotable like Reddit or Hacker News, it is the wrong shape.

On pricing, topicPolls is the cheapest option on the list at the 1-site annual tier ($23.99/yr) and at the lifetime entry tier ($79.99). The price gap narrows at higher tiers — WPFTW’s $249 lifetime 3-site undercuts topicPolls Pro Studio lifetime ($271.99) by 8%, and the $399 25-site undercuts Agency ($543.99) by 27%. So the right framing is: topicPolls wins on the entry annual price, WPFTW wins on the lifetime upper-tier price.

TopicPolls is built by Milan Petrik at Dev4Press, who also makes GD Rating System (below) and a bbPress Plugins Club. Updates have been slow — the free plugin went 44 days without an update as of this writing.

BBP Core (by GamerZ)

BBP Core is not a voting plugin. It is a full bbPress replacement/extension suite (private messaging, profile fields, custom post types, awards, and yes, a voting feature). If you want one plugin to overhaul your forum end-to-end, this is a serious option. If you want voting and nothing else, it is overkill.

The voting module inside BBP Core is community-vote oriented — users earn voting weight through forum activity. That is a different paradigm than the standard upvote/downvote counter. The rating is a perfect 5/5 but only from 18 raters, so the sample is small.

DA Reactions

DA Reactions lets forum users react to topics and replies with emoji-style reactions instead of numeric upvotes/downvotes. The design works for some communities (think Slack-style reactions) but it is not a substitute for sortable vote counts. The bigger problem: the plugin has not been updated in 14 months at the time of writing, and the author’s marketing site has been in maintenance mode. I would not install it on a production forum today.

Generic Voting Plugins That Work on bbPress (with caveats)

GD Rating System (Dev4Press)

GD Rating System is a general-purpose star-rating and like/dislike system from the same Dev4Press team that makes GD Topic Polls. It works on bbPress topics and replies as one of several supported “objects.” The voting semantics are a thin layer on top of its generic post-rating engine — there is no notion of “best reply in a topic,” no per-reply vote sort that is bbPress-aware, and no integration with bbPress forum roles.

If your forum is one of many post types you rate (e.g. you also rate WooCommerce products and blog posts), GD Rating System is a sensible unified choice. If bbPress is the only thing you care about, you are paying for a generic rating engine and getting bbPress support as an afterthought.

On price it sits in the middle of the pack. Entry annual $39.99 (basically tied with WPFTW’s $40), lifetime entry $135.99 (cheaper than WPFTW’s $149 lifetime single). The Studio and Agency lifetime tiers get expensive fast ($463.99 / $927.99).

WP ULike

WP ULike is the most-installed plugin on this list (60,000 active installs, 96/100 rating from 281 raters). It is also the broadest in scope — a “like button and reactions” plugin that supports posts, pages, WooCommerce products, BuddyPress activity, and bbPress forums. v5.2.3 shipped on August 29, 2026 with a new statistics dashboard and engagement reports.

The bbPress integration is bolt-on. WP ULike was built for post reactions first and bbPress second. The vote counts show on topics and replies, but the data model is one vote per user per object — there is no built-in understanding that a topic’s “best answer” should rise to the top, no forum-role-aware member-only voting, and no separation between topic-level and reply-level tallies the way a forum-native plugin would treat them.

On price WP ULike is the most expensive option on this list at every tier. Their annual pricing: $59 single / $119 5-site / $299 25-site. Lifetime: $199 / $399 / $599. WPFTW undercuts them by 25-38% at every comparable tier.

LikeBtn

LikeBtn is fundamentally different from everything else on the list. It is a SaaS — your votes are stored on LikeBtn’s servers, not in your WordPress database. The free tier exists but paid features require a likebtn.com account starting at $7.99/month per website.

The pitch is “no server load on your host.” The trade-off is that your forum’s voting data lives on someone else’s infrastructure. They do offer a DPA for GDPR, but every paid plan is recurring — there is no lifetime option, no matter how long you keep the plugin installed. Annual plans are roughly $58 / $94 / $230 across their PLUS/PRO/ULTRA tiers. Past 1 million monthly pageviews, you pay $2/month for every additional 250k.

For a small forum, the recurring cost is manageable. For a growing forum, the cost grows with your traffic in a way that a self-hosted plugin does not. bbPress integration is one of nine supported surfaces, and like the other generic plugins, the data model is generic — not forum-aware.

How to Choose

Pick based on what you actually need.

1. If you want Reddit-style voting on every topic and reply, with the vote count visible and sortable: you need a purpose-built bbPress voting plugin. On this list that is bbPress Voting Pro (free version available, Pro adds time-decay sorting, voter reputation, shortcodes, and admin stats) or GD Topic Polls (if you specifically want polls).
2. If you want to rate bbPress plus WooCommerce products plus blog posts in one unified system: GD Rating System or WP ULike. Pick GD if you like tighter integration with Dev4Press plugins, WP ULike if you want the biggest community and most frequent updates.
3. If you are OK with votes living on a third-party server and want the lowest-friction setup: LikeBtn, but accept the recurring cost.
4. If you want to rebuild your forum with a full suite and voting is one feature among many: BBP Core.
5. If you want emoji reactions instead of numeric votes: DA Reactions — but verify the author is back to active maintenance before you install on a community you care about.

The Free vs Pro Question

The free bbPress Voting plugin on WordPress.org is a complete voting system, not a teaser. It handles upvotes and downvotes on topics and replies, vote count display, vote changes, and a basic “most voted” sort. If your forum is small and you just need the basics, the free version will serve you well.

Pro adds the things a busy forum eventually asks for:

• Time-decay sorting — a topic with 3 votes today ranks above one with 5 votes from a year ago. This is how Reddit and Hacker News keep discussions alive instead of buried under old content.
• Voter reputation profiles — see which posts each user voted on and their overall reputation score. Useful for moderation.
• Shortcodes for “top this week,” “most controversial,” and “lowest rated” displays anywhere on your site.
• Admin vote stats dashboard so you can see vote activity trends across the forum.
• Rate limiting to prevent vote abuse and bot voting patterns.
• Priority support directly from me.

The full feature breakdown, the price comparison against WP ULike and LikeBtn, and the Pro tier ladder (1-site / 3-site / 25-site / unlimited, both annual and lifetime) are on the bbPress Voting Pro sales page.

What I Would Skip in 2026

A few plugins in this space I did not include in the table because they do not meet a basic bar:

• bbPress Votes (not bbPress Voting) — abandoned since 2020, last updated over six years ago. Do not install.
• Any “k-star rating” or “YOP poll” plugin — these are for posts and pages, not bbPress forums. They will appear in your forum’s “Plugins that work on bbPress” Google searches, but they don’t.

The Verdict for Forum Owners

If you run a bbPress forum and you want voting to actually feel like part of the forum experience — sortable replies, vote-aware member profiles, bbPress-native role logic — there are exactly two reasonable choices in 2026: bbPress Voting (free or Pro) for free-form upvote/downvote, or GD Topic Polls if you specifically want polls. Everything else on this list is either a generic rating plugin wearing a bbPress integration, a SaaS that stores your data off-site, or an older plugin that has not been maintained this year.

If you want a head-to-head comparison with WP ULike specifically, I wrote that as part of the bbPress Voting Pro sales page. Otherwise, the best place to start is the free plugin — install it, see if the basics work for your community, and decide later if Pro’s sorting and reputation features are worth $40 a year for one site.

Either way, I hope this gave you a useful starting point. If you have a forum in mind and want to compare specific features before you buy, drop a comment below and I will dig into the answer.

Nathan Kinkead

Blogger, expert WordPress developer, and developer of the awesome bbPress Voting plugin which is a must-have plugin for any bbPress forum.

Download bbPress Voting for free on the WordPress Plugin Directory.