WordPress MCP plugins, compared on facts.
There are several good MCP plugins for WordPress, and marketing pages rarely help you tell them apart. This one tries something else: a small set of verifiable facts, each checked against primary sources — vendor pages, the WordPress.org API, and in several cases the published source code — on one stated date.
Five things you can verify yourself.
All figures as published on 2026-08-26. Products change quickly — check the vendors' own pages before deciding, and tell us if anything here has gone stale.
| What | AlphaBridge MCP | Royal MCP | Respira | WSP MCP | MCP Adapter (official) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free version on WordPress.org | ✓ 39 tools | ✓ | — | ✓ | — (GitHub / Composer) |
| Paid plan, one site, per year | $49 | $99 * | €71 | — (free) | — (free) |
| Deploy a site’s files over FTP/SFTP to your own hosting | ✓ Agency plan | — † | — † | — † | — † |
| Licence of the free / core version | GPLv2+ | GPLv2+ | proprietary core | GPL / MIT ‡ | GPL-2.0+ |
| Where you get it | WordPress.org + Freemius | WordPress.org + vendor | vendor site | WordPress.org | GitHub / Composer |
* Royal MCP Pro "Personal" tier; the vendor labels these prices "Founders Pricing — Live Ladder" and states they rotate as seats fill, so treat them as a snapshot. † "—" means: not present in the product’s published tool reference or, where we checked it, its public source code, as of 2026-08-26 — not a claim about what a vendor may ship tomorrow. For the MCP Adapter this describes the adapter package itself; what an installation can do depends on the Abilities registered on it. The Adapter’s own WordPress.org directory listing is in preparation per the project’s tracker. ‡ The vendor’s statements differ: GPL-2.0-or-later in the plugin package and on GitHub, MIT on the vendor’s website. Sources (checked 2026-08-26): Royal MCP on WordPress.org and royalplugins.com (source of 1.4.43 via WordPress.org SVN), respira.press/pricing, WSP MCP on WordPress.org (source of 2.7.0 via SVN), github.com/WordPress/mcp-adapter. Spotted an error? Tell us — we correct quickly.
Why we don't compare tool counts.
Because the numbers don't measure the same thing. Respira's own pages state four different totals (172, 210+, 319, 320+), depending on how you count. Of WSP MCP's 178 tools, 27 work on a bare WordPress install — the other 151 register only when a specific third-party plugin is active. Royal MCP's "170+" includes 86 integration tools that load only alongside plugins like WooCommerce or Elementor. And the official MCP Adapter deliberately ships just three meta-tools, because its design delegates everything else to the Abilities API.
AlphaBridge's own count — 126 tools, 39 of them free — has the same caveat: the WooCommerce and SEO tools are only useful with those plugins installed. A single number tells you very little about any of these products. What the tools let you actually do, does.
Managing and publishing share one plugin.
The row that separates the table above is the deploy row — so here is exactly what it means, and no more.
Deploy lives inside the plugin
Standalone MCP file-transfer tools exist — as separate software running outside WordPress. AlphaBridge is a WordPress plugin: site management and file publishing sit behind the same endpoint, the same permissions and the same audit log.
Credentials stay on your server
FTP/SFTP credentials are encrypted with libsodium inside WordPress and are never readable through MCP — they don't sit in a desktop config file or pass through the AI client.
Built for the handover
A provider builds and publishes the site on the Agency plan, then hands it over — and the owner keeps running it at pro level on Pro or Free. No agency lock-in, by design.
When another tool is the better pick.
- WSP MCP — free and open-source with a broad reach into the Elementor, Gravity Forms and ACF ecosystems. If your work lives in those builders and you don't need deploy, it is hard to argue with the price.
- Respira — the deepest page-builder coverage we've seen (17 builders, element-level access) and a very fast release pace. If builder fidelity is your daily business, look there first.
- Royal MCP — strong Divi and WooCommerce tooling with undo tokens on destructive writes, and a large install base on the free tier.
- MCP Adapter — the official building block. If you develop against the WordPress Abilities API and want the core-blessed transport rather than a product, start here.
See the difference in practice.
The free plugin takes only minutes to try, and Pro has a 7-day trial without a credit card. The walkthrough shows the whole cycle — building, publishing, handing over.
Get it free on WordPress.org Why this changes the economics