Best Akismet Alternatives to Stop Comment Spam

I’ve been using the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin for a long time to filter out unwanted comments, and it worked quite well—until recently. Akismet started suspending accounts due to inaccurate information during the registration process.

One of my WordPress websites was suddenly flooded with a huge number of spam comments. At first, I assumed Akismet had simply failed to filter them. But after looking into it, I discovered that my Akismet account had actually been suspended.

So, I began searching for alternative ways to stop spam comments effectively. Here’s what I did instead:

1. I went to Settings → Discussion in the WordPress dashboard and enabled the option:
   “Users must be registered and logged in to comment.”
   This instantly blocked most automated bot comments.
2. Next, I added an anti-spam verification plugin—Cloudflare Turnstile—to help ensure only real visitors can leave comments. Turnstile quietly checks that a user is human before allowing a comment to post.

Since implementing these two changes, my comment section has been completely spam-free.

https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/turnstile