WooCommerce has no built-in way to let shoppers put two or three products side by side and see what actually differs between them. If you sell anything where customers cross-shop variants, like electronics, furniture, or tools with overlapping specs, that gap costs you conversions. Four plugins solve it well: WCBoost Products Compare and Addonify Compare Products are free, WPC Smart Compare is free with a cheap one-time upgrade, and YITH WooCommerce Compare is the most established name with a yearly premium tier. The right pick depends on whether your products already use WooCommerce attributes consistently and how much styling control you need without writing CSS.
| Plugin | Best for | Price | Last updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| YITH WooCommerce Compare | Attribute-driven catalogs, multilingual stores | Free, Premium $69.99/year | October 13, 2026 |
| WCBoost Products Compare | Zero-cost setup with a compare page or popup | Free | September 14, 2026 |
| WPC Smart Compare | Drag-and-drop reordering, taxonomy filtering | Free, Pro from $29 one-time | September 28, 2026 |
| Addonify Compare Products | Full color and layout control with no CSS | Free | July 16, 2026 |
YITH WooCommerce Compare
YITH WooCommerce Compare is the oldest and most widely deployed plugin in this comparison, and it takes a specific approach: the comparison table is built entirely from your WooCommerce product attributes. Whatever attributes you’ve assigned to a product (size, material, wattage, whatever applies) are what show up as comparable rows. There’s no separate data entry step for the compare feature itself, which is either a strength or a real limitation depending on how disciplined your product data already is.
- Price: Free on WordPress.org, Premium $69.99/year for one site (regularly $79.99)
- Requires: WordPress 6.9+, PHP 8.0+
- Last updated: October 13, 2026
Setup runs through a dedicated settings screen under YIT Plugin, then Compare, where you configure how the button and table behave. Shoppers click a “Compare” button on the single product page, which opens the table in a popup. You can also drop a “YITH WooCommerce Compare Widget” into any widget area from Appearance, then Widgets, so customers can see and manage their compare list from anywhere on the site, not just the product page.
The honest limitation: if your catalog doesn’t have attributes set consistently across products, the free version gives you an empty-feeling table with nothing to compare. Fixing that means going back and auditing product attributes, not configuring the plugin. The free version also keeps styling to the built-in template; a genuinely custom popup design or deeper WPML sync control pushes you into the paid tier.
WCBoost Products Compare
WCBoost Products Compare takes a different approach than YITH: instead of relying only on attributes, it pulls in standard product data (price, description, rating, availability) automatically, so it works even on catalogs that haven’t been attribute-tagged. It’s also entirely free with no premium upsell at all, which is unusual for a plugin this capable.
- Price: Free
- Requires: WordPress 5.7+, PHP 7.0+
- Last updated: September 14, 2026
Once activated, compare buttons appear automatically on both catalog pages and single product pages, no shortcode placement required for the default setup. You choose whether the finished comparison opens as its own dedicated page or as an AJAX popup, and there’s an optional sticky bottom bar plus a widget so a shopper who adds products from three different categories doesn’t lose track of their list. Button styling is handled through Appearance, Customize, WooCommerce, in the Products Compare section, so no code is needed for basic branding.
The limitation worth knowing before you install it: variable products can be added to the compare list, but individual variations can’t, so a shopper comparing a shirt in two different colors sees the same parent product twice rather than a true side-by-side of the variations. The plugin’s own FAQ also notes it works with any theme but “may require some styling to make it match nicely,” which is a polite way of saying don’t expect pixel-perfect theme integration out of the box.
WPC Smart Compare
WPC Smart Compare from WPClever has the deepest free feature set of the four. Everything runs over AJAX, so adding or removing a product from the comparison never reloads the page, and customers can drag and drop to reorder products within the comparison line itself. It also supports filtering the comparison bar by taxonomy (category, color, size), and it can switch between a horizontal and vertical table layout depending on how many fields you’re comparing.
- Price: Free, Pro from $29 one-time for a single site (lifetime updates, one year of premium support)
- Requires: WordPress 5.9+, no stated minimum PHP version
- Last updated: September 28, 2026
Installation is the standard Plugins, Add New, search, install, activate flow, and the compare button appears on products automatically once it’s active. Where this plugin earns its “deepest feature set” label is also where it asks more of you: integrating it cleanly into a custom theme means using two filters, woosc_button_position_archive and woosc_button_position_single, to turn off the default auto-injected buttons, then placing the button yourself with the [woosc id="{product_id}"] shortcode. That’s a reasonable ask for a developer, less so if you’re not comfortable touching a filter hook.
The free version covers most of what a typical store needs. The honest caveat is that full customization of comparison attributes and custom product fields is Pro-only, along with the horizontal/vertical table toggle still marked as upcoming in the plugin’s own description at the time of writing, so don’t count on that specific feature being live yet.
Addonify Compare Products
Addonify Compare Products is the newest and smallest of the four by install base, and it leans into that by being genuinely lightweight and developer-friendly rather than trying to out-feature the others. Everything about how the compare button and table look is adjustable from the plugin’s own settings screen, down to individual colors for the button, the comparison dock, and the search modal, without touching a stylesheet.
- Price: Free
- Requires: WordPress 6.3+, PHP 7.4+
- Last updated: July 16, 2026
After activating it from Plugins, Add New, configuration happens under Dashboard, Addonify, Compare, Settings, where you choose whether the table opens in a modal window or its own page, pick which fields display (image, price, rating, description, attributes), and set how long a visitor’s comparison list persists in their browser via cookie. For manual placement outside the normal product loop, there’s a [addonify_compare_button] shortcode with its own attributes for label, icon position, and CSS classes, and the plugin ships overridable template files for developers who want full control of the frontend markup.
It’s genuinely newer than the other three options here and has the smallest install base by a wide margin, so it hasn’t been battle-tested across as many themes and edge cases. Its last update is also a few months further back than the others, July against the September and October dates elsewhere in this comparison, which isn’t a red flag on its own but is worth checking against your specific theme before you commit to it over a more established option.
How to Pick
- If your product attributes are already set up consistently across your catalog and you might eventually want multilingual compatibility, use YITH WooCommerce Compare.
- If you want a capable compare feature at zero cost and don’t need to reorder or filter the comparison list, use WCBoost Products Compare.
- If you want the richest free feature set, including drag-and-drop reordering and taxonomy filtering, and you’re comfortable using a filter hook and a shortcode for custom theme placement, use WPC Smart Compare.
- If you want full visual control over the button and table through settings alone, with no CSS and no premium upsell, and you’re fine being an early adopter, use Addonify Compare Products.
- If your catalog’s comparison needs are specific enough that none of these fit cleanly, building the feature as part of a WooCommerce development engagement is usually faster than bending a generic plugin out of shape.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does WooCommerce have a built-in product compare feature?
No. WooCommerce ships with a wishlist-adjacent “compare” concept in some themes’ demo content, but the core plugin has no comparison table feature. It has to come from a dedicated plugin or custom development.
Can shoppers compare product variations, like different sizes or colors, or only the parent product?
It depends on the plugin. WCBoost Products Compare only compares the parent variable product, not individual variations. Check this specifically if your store relies heavily on variations before picking a plugin based on price alone.
Will adding a compare plugin slow down my store?
All four plugins here are built around AJAX for adding and removing products, so the comparison itself doesn’t trigger full page reloads. Addonify markets itself specifically as lightweight, and WPC Smart Compare’s entire interaction model is AJAX-based. As with any plugin, test on a staging copy of your site before going live.
Do I need to manually enter the comparison data for each product?
Not with any of these four. YITH pulls from WooCommerce product attributes you’ve already set. The other three pull standard WooCommerce fields like price, rating, description, and attributes automatically, so there’s no separate data entry step.
Can I limit which fields show up in the comparison table?
Yes, though the depth varies. Addonify lets you pick fields directly in its settings screen. WPC Smart Compare offers field visibility controls free, with full custom field and attribute support reserved for the Pro version.
None of ConicPlex’s own plugins cover this specific feature today, so this comparison sticks to the four dedicated options above. If your store’s comparison needs are tied to something more custom, like pulling in data from an external catalog or ERP, that’s closer to the kind of work we cover in custom WordPress plugin development, including catalog-focused builds like this WooCommerce product bundles plugin we built for a client who needed something none of the off-the-shelf options handled. If what you actually need is an affiliate-style comparison table rather than a live WooCommerce catalog, we covered the best plugins for that separately.
