If you want to take your website’s design to the next level, a free WordPress gallery plugin is your best option.
A good gallery plugin comes equipped with every feature your website needs to display images in beautiful gallery layouts. And if you’re on a tight budget, there are plenty of free gallery plugins you can pick from.
That’s why we’ve prepared this list of the best free gallery plugins to make it easier for you to pick the perfect one for your site.
Let’s start by understanding why gallery plugins are so important in WordPress.
Table of Contents
Why Include Gallery Plugins on Your Site?
The primary purpose of any gallery plugin is to display images in a beautiful layout in one place on your site. Here are a few other reasons for using gallery plugins:
- Eye-catching appearance: The number one reason is to incorporate beautiful-looking pictures in a gallery and attract visitors to your website.
- Increases traffic: Photo galleries can improve visitor engagement and help increase the site’s traffic.
- Sell photos: You can also sell the pictures through a WordPress website with eCommerce-supported gallery plugins.
- Organize pictures: A gallery plugin enables you to organize the images on your website, making it easier to manage them.
With that said, let’s explore the best WordPress gallery plugins on the list!
15 Best Free WordPress Gallery Plugins
1. NextGEN Gallery
Running since 2007, NextGEN Gallery helps you create photo galleries with simplicity. It’s a heavy-duty plugin for visual artists, professional photographers, etc. Further, it’s an accurate option if you are someone who manages thousands of pictures.
You can showcase your work either as a thumbnail gallery or slideshow with NextGEN. Additionally, there are two albums style: Extended and Compact to choose from. Also, the plugin lets you create and manage unlimited galleries without any hassle.
Key Features
- Various stylish gallery layouts
- Includes social media share buttons
- Integration with eCommerce
- Generates sales tax after photo sales
- Offers print lab fulfillment
2. Photo Gallery by 10Web
Photo Gallery by 10Web is a WordPress image gallery plugin available to website owners for free. It lets you set up interactive multimedia galleries. You can also create individual galleries with either photos or videos. And for protection, you can watermark your images with it.
Photo Gallery comes with a powerful lightbox to present your content. The plugin also supports Vimeo, Flickr, YouTube, etc. for you to include videos in the gallery. Also, you can boost your galleries with audio tracks during the image slideshow.
Key Features
- Various widgets
- Right-click protection
- Modern web design
- Fully customizable
- Comes with many add-ons
3. Envira Photo Gallery
The next plugin on our list is Envira which has a well-designed interface with a drag and drop builder feature. Also, it works smoothly with popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, etc. for an even better gallery creation experience. You can simply upload images from your device and arrange them in a gallery.
The plugin is easy to customize as it comes with many filters and hooks. Moreover, it’s pretty easy for image proofing. You can even add beautiful slideshows with Envira. Further, it allows creating standalone galleries that aren’t tied up to your pages.
Key Features
- WooCommerce integrated
- Allows social sharing
- Split galleries with pagination
- Deeplink images in gallery
- Password protection available
4. Photo Gallery by FooGallery
Photo Gallery by FooGallery is a super easy-to-use WordPress gallery plugin that comes with pre-built templates. You can take full control of this free plugin to customize your gallery with advanced settings. And, it’s completely configurable too. Not to forget, you get complete control over the caption too.
Photo Gallery comes with live previews for you while making galleries. The plugin’s best factors include First Input Delay, Largest Contentful Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift. Not to mention, it’s also responsive and retina-ready.
Key Features
- Six pre-built templates
- Customize animated loaded effects
- Gutenberg ready
- Gallery widget
- Use custom CSS
5. Modula Image Gallery
One of the best WordPress image gallery plugins you can find is Modula Image Gallery. You can create beautiful lightbox galleries, custom grids, etc., right through the WordPress dashboard. It offers 40+ built-in hover effects as well.
Modula allows each image to have a title and subtitle so that it provides a better meaning to the viewers. With a random grid, you can create a gallery with a unique look. You can also keep the random grid option off to create a classic old everyday style gallery.
Key Features
- Add custom watermarks
- Combine videos and images in your gallery
- Migrate galleries with the migration tool
- Right-click protection
- Includes helper grid to place the image
6. Robo Gallery
Robo Gallery is another WordPress image gallery plugin that’s free, highly customizable, and easy to use. It will just take you a few minutes to create a gallery with this plugin. Additionally, you won’t require to adjust much in terms of settings to get started.
You also get a Gutenberg module without needing shortcodes. Moreover, it comes with dozens of demos for a quick start. Hence, you won’t even need to make everything from scratch if you’re short on time.
Key Features
- Unlimited images can be added
- 100% responsive
- One-click setup
- Thumbnails and images can be auto resized
- Offers advanced polaroid styles
7. Image Photo Gallery Final Tiles Grid
Image Photo Gallery Final Tiles Grid offers features that enable you to create a unique gallery with its brand-new algorithm. the best thing about it is that the plugin doesn’t crop the images and tries to keep the image size original. Along with that, it provides one lightbox and even supports EverlightBox, another popular gallery plugin.
Along with photographs, it supports video content too. Besides that, a few of the plugin’s remarkable features are products showcase, photography and designer portfolios, wedding photo galleries, etc.
Key Features
- Fully responsive
- Allows social sharing
- Offers tiles and columns layouts
- Allows manual or random image sorting
- Allows to adjust the margin
8. Video Gallery
Video Gallery is among the beginner-friendly image gallery plugins available in WordPress. As the name suggests, it supports videos from Wistia, YouTube, and more. With Video Gallery, you get to showcase your video collection in a beautiful gallery.
The plugin also supports all sorts of WordPress themes. It works perfectly for all kinds of sites, whether it be an entertainment site or a blog. Best of all, Video Gallery offers 16 templates and nine gallery layouts.
Key Features
- Offers sleek lightbox
- Hover effects
- No limit on shortcode generator
- Create unlimited videos
- Scale, Skew, Translate, Rotate effects
9. Photonic Gallery & Lightbox
Photonic Gallery & Lightbox is yet another must-have free WordPress gallery plugin. It supports Flickr photos, SmugMug, Zenfolio, etc. Besides that, you can protect your gallery behind authentication. This allows only specific visitors to see protected or private pictures.
Likewise, Photonic offers a gallery wizard using which you can build your gallery in no time. The plugin also allows you to use shortcodes for galleries. Or, you can use Gutenberg, where the plugin creates blocks and not shortcodes.
Key Features
- Built-in support for the highest amount of lightbox scripts
- Beautiful layouts
- Supports gallery and lightbox for videos
- Social sharing
- Supports Instagram photos
10. Portfolio Gallery
With Portfolio Gallery, it only takes a few minutes to set up an image gallery with an incredible design. As you create an attractive portfolio for your site with this plugin, you’ll also be able to show numbering for the included images.
In addition to this, you can effortlessly create filters for your portfolio gallery. You can also add image titles, captions. Further, the plugin offers color options to add multiple colors for the filters button.
Key Features
- Option to show gallery with or without spacing
- Grayscale effect
- Offers bootstrap lightbox
- Fully responsive
- Masonry style galleries
11. Meow Gallery
Meow Gallery comes with five layouts; square, masonry, tiles, cascade, and justified. It’s also one of the fastest plugins. Even better, it’s SEO-friendly; so, your image list will get included in your sitemap.
Additionally, the plugin offers a Gutenberg module and has various photo filters too. The plugin also has a great gallery format, “Map Layout,” perfect to share trip photos, making it ideal for travel photographers.
Key Features
- Connects with Lightroom to edit
- Lazy load tool and infinite loading for a smooth experience
- Link gallery with Google Maps
- Enable captions
- Add music and audio to images
12. Gallery PhotoBlocks
Next on our list is Gallery PhotoBlocks, which has an active installation of more than 6000. It’s an easy-to-use WordPress image gallery plugin, just the perfect tool to compose galleries with justified edges. And the best thing is that you can zoom into the images thanks to the lightbox feature.
On top of that, you get to add special effects to your grid gallery. Also, you can use the plugin’s builder to set up a justified photo gallery. The plugin even provides special effects on mouse hover and loading special effects.
Key Features
- Allows image shuffle
- Pages and videos open with the image click
- Position captions
- Fast loading galleries
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) support
13. Gallery Images Ape
Gallery Images Ape comes with various layouts and a customizable interface design. Not to mention, the WordPress gallery plugin is free and has been tested on many browsers, and supports touch screen mobiles. The best part is that even beginners can use it without any difficulty.
You can either set a single category or multiple ones on the same page. Plus, there’s no limit on the number of categories you can create with the plugin. Apart from that, the menu styles can be configured as per the wide range of options available.
Key Features
- Offers hover effect
- Zoom and link button with various functions
- Add image description
- Thumbnails padding
- Facebook sharing
14. EverlightBox Gallery
Next up on our list is EverlightBox Gallery. It’s a safe and fast lightbox plugin that’s compatible with every other gallery plugin. It can be easily used with galleries like Final Tiles, PhotoBlocks Grid Gallery, and more.
EverlightBox also supports swipe gestures. This allows users to navigate the images in your gallery in a much more convenient way. This, in turn, improves the overall user experience. It even allows its users to fix bugs and pitch new features as per requirement.
Key Features
- Supports Vimeo and YouTube
- Allows social share of images on Facebook, Pinterest, and Houzz
- Users can comment on images
- Fully customizable
- Use with any linked images
15. Gallery- Image and Video Gallery with Thumbnails
Gallery is a free WordPress image gallery plugin that allows you to showcase images with attractive animation and viewing effects. It also offers different kinds of canvas animation. Further, you can customize designs as per your need.
You can change the count of elements and set the number of columns through the plugin’s customization options. Additionally, you can select the crop height and width of pictures. The plugin is also tested for compatibility with major WordPress themes.
Key Features
- Create unlimited galleries and images
- Change overlay color, picture names
- Offers slide pause time
- Comes with a control bar icon, height
- Change pagination panel height
Conclusion
Thus, this concludes our list of best free WordPress gallery plugins. They’ll help you to create beautiful galleries on your site with features such as unique gallery layouts, lightbox, social sharing, pagination, and so much more.
You can choose them as per liking and needs for your site as each one has its specialty. If you’re interested in more WordPress plugins for donation, lead generation, Google AMP, etc., please check our blog for similar articles.
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