NinjaFirewall

Overview

NinjaFirewall (WP Edition) is a web application firewall published by NinTechNet. It was listed on WordPress.org in March 2013 and reported 100,000+ active installations in November 2026.^[15]

Although it installs like a plugin, NinjaFirewall works as a stand-alone firewall that sits in front of WordPress. It can hook, scan, sanitise or reject any HTTP or HTTPS request sent to a PHP script before the request reaches WordPress or its plugins, and it protects every script inside the installation directories, including scripts that are not part of WordPress and hackers’ shell scripts or backdoors.^[15] Its filtering engine normalises and decodes incoming data to detect evasion and obfuscation techniques, and the developer argues that processing requests before WordPress loads makes it effective against very large brute-force attacks, including distributed attacks.^[15]

NinjaFirewall requires PHP 7.1 or later and the MySQLi extension and works only on Unix-like systems (Linux, BSD); it is not compatible with Microsoft Windows.^[15] It is a specialist tool aimed at technically confident administrators, and its configuration can be more involved than that of mainstream suites.

NinjaFirewall features

• Firewall loads before WordPress
• Filters requests to all PHP scripts in the installation
• Data normalisation against evasion techniques
• Brute-force protection before WordPress loads
• Works alongside other plugins

NinjaFirewall pricing

Free plugin on WordPress.org; for premium options see vendor.

NinjaFirewall strengths and limitations

Appears in

• Best WordPress Security Plugins in 2026 #10

NinjaFirewall alternatives and competitors

Alternatives to NinjaFirewall: companies ranked in the same lists.

• WSWordfence Security
• Patchstack
• Sucuri
• Kadence
• UpdraftPlus
• MalCare
• Jetpack VaultPress Backup
• WPMU DEV
• Shield Security
• SiteGround
• Limit Login Attempts Reloaded
• WP Activity Log