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WordPress has a built-in image gallery feature, but it’s nothing fancy. It doesn’t even have a lightbox feature that allows the users to open the images in an overlay window.

If you link the images to be enlarged when clicked, WordPress will open up the files in the browser. This will force the users to click the Back button to go back to the web page with the images. That’s not optimal, and it can be annoying.

So, if you’re using image galleries a lot on your WordPress website, then you should consider using a plugin.

Let’s take a look at some of the best free image gallery plugins for WordPress. They’re quite a few, so you have where to choose from.

All of them have premium versions if you need more features and don’t mind spending a buck at some point.

1. Photo Gallery by 10Web

Active installations: 300,000+ | Rating: 4.6/5

The Photo Gallery plugin for WordPress allows you to create awesome and responsive (mobile-friendly) image galleries within minutes, thanks to its ease-of-use design.

The plugin also comes with a special block for the WordPress editor so you can easily insert any image gallery that you created.

Here are some of the plugin’s free features:

• Customizable views: You can add your galleries using different styles, such as thumbnails, slideshows, or image browser;
• Unlimited albums, galleries, and images;
• Lightbox: You can display your images in a responsive lightbox that contains autoplay, full-width view option, and more;
• Audio and video support: You can add audio tracks to the galleries, as well as videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, and more;
• Image watermarking: You can add text or image watermarks over the photos;

2. FooGallery

Active installations: 200,000+ | Rating: 4.8/5

FooGallery is another free image gallery plugin for WordPress that allows you to easily manage and create galleries within minutes.

It’s responsive, retina-ready, and uses lazy loading to improve the loading time. It also comes with a special block for the WordPress editor.

Here are some of the plugin’s free features:

• 6 image gallery templates: Responsive, image viewer, masonry, simple portfolio, justified, and single thumbnail;
• Easy customization for thumbnails, borders, loading icons, and hover effects;
• Gallery previews right in the editor;
• Drag-and-drop reordering for images and galleries;
• Custom CSS: You can customize the design of the galleries and albums by adding custom CSS code;
• Multisite support.

3. RoboGallery

Active installations: 50,000+ | Rating: 4.3/5

RoboGallery is a responsive, customizable, and free image gallery plugin for WordPress. Like the other two plugins, RoboGallery is easy to use, and it comes with its own block for the WordPress editor.

Here are some of the plugin’s free features:

• Unlimited images for every album;
• Auto-resizing: Allows you to customize the images by flipping, rotating, cropping, or adjusting their size;
• 15 hover effects;
• 5 gallery types: Grid, masonry, mosaic, polaroid, or YouTube;
• Social sharing: Users can share your images on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media websites;
• Categories: You can organize your albums into multiple categories;
• Lazy loading to improve the loading time;
• Customizable lightbox: You can change the lightbox’s background color, background transparency, font color, and more;

4. NextGen Gallery

Active installations: 700,000+ | Rating: 4.3/5

NextGen is one of the veterans. It was created back in 2007, and since then it has been one of the best free image gallery plugins for WordPress.

Needless to say that after all these years, the developers gathered enough experience to provide users with a good, easy-to-use, and intuitive image gallery WordPress plugin.

Here are some of the plugin’s free features:

• Import metadata;
• Rearrange and sort images;
• Edit thumbnails by rotating or cropping them;
• Group galleries into albums;
• 3 gallery styles: Slideshow, thumbnail, and image browser;
• 2 album styles: Compact and extended;
• Customization for size, timing, style, controls, transitions, lightbox effects, and more;
• Full support for the block editor where you can choose the style, customize the display settings, sort or exclude images, and other gallery management options.

5. Envira Gallery

Active installations: 100,000+ | Rating: 4.8/5

Envira Gallery is also one of the best free image gallery plugins for WordPress. It’s been around for over 7 years if I’m not mistaken.

Envira Gallery is a drag-and-drop plugin that’s optimized, easy, fast, and powerful, allowing you to create great photo galleries in minutes, without hassle.

It also adds its own block for the WordPress editor, which comes with several settings that you can adjust.

The plugin lacks two main features in the free version that the other plugins offer, and which are important for most of you, I believe.

1. It doesn’t offer the ability to group the galleries into albums or categories;
2. It doesn’t offer any gallery styles, such as mosaic or masonry.

Let’s see some of the free features:

• Drag-and-drop builder that allows you to upload your images and rearrange them;
• Up to 6 gallery columns;
• Lightbox;
• Lazy loading for improved loading time.

6. Responsive Lightbox & Gallery by dFactory

Active installations: 200,000+ | Rating: 4.9/5

The Responsive Lightbox & Gallery plugin created by dFactory is highly customizable. It offers a lot of customization options in the free version, compared to many similar plugins.

Moreover, it offers the lightbox effect as a global feature that will apply to any linked image added to your WordPress site, not only for the galleries created with the plugin.

And, as the other plugins, it comes with its own block for the WordPress editor, to easily add your galleries in your posts or pages.

Here are some of the plugin’s free features:

• Drag-and-drop builder that allows you to upload and rearrange images;
• 3 gallery types: Grid, slider, and masonry;
• 8 responsive lightbox styles;
• Media folders with drag-and-drop feature;
• Gallery categories;
• Remote Library: Allows you to choose from millions of images from different media providers;
• Display single post images as galleries;
• Automatically set gallery image titles from image titles, captions, or descriptions;
• Multisite support.

7. Modula

Active installations: 90,000+ | Rating: 4.7/5

The last one on my list of best free image gallery plugins for WordPress is Modula. It’s responsive, easy-to-use, and customizable.

Its drag-and-drop feature allows you to easily upload and rearrange your photos.

Adding the image galleries to your posts and pages is also easy with the block created for the WordPress editor.

Here are some of the plugin’s free features:

• Drag-and-drop builder that allows you to upload and rearrange your images;
• Custom grids feature that allows you to adjust the size and aspect ratio of each image by simply dragging it from the bottom-right corner;
• Lightbox;
• Social sharing: Users can share the gallery images on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media websites;
• Hover effect;
• Customizable borders and shadows;
• Lazy loading to improve the loading time;
• Custom CSS: This allows you to customize the design using custom CSS code.

The End

This is the end of my list of the best free image gallery plugins for WordPress. I hope that you found a plugin suitable to your needs, and you managed to create some awesome galleries that will impress your visitors.

Don’t forget to optimize your images before uploading them in WordPress, though. It’s very important for your website’s performance.

If you have questions or thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below.

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