How to find the last updated date of a WordPress plugin

The last updated date of a WordPress plugin is the date the plugin last received an update in the wordpress.org plugin directory. You can use this date to help assess whether a plugin has been abandoned. The last updated date is set whenever the developer publishes an update, including simple updates to indicate compatibility with newer versions of WordPress. As such, it is concerning when a plugin has not been updated in a long period of time.

Option 1: Check the web

1. Go to the plugin directory at https://wordpress.org/plugins/
2. Search for the plugin
3. Look for the Last updated field on the side panel

Option 2: Check the details from WordPress

1. Sign into your WordPress site with an admin account
2. From the side menu, click Plugins > Installed Plugins
3. Find the plugin and click View Details in the description column
4. Look for the Last Updated field on the right side of the popup

Developers: Call the wordpress.org API

Developers can call the wordpress.org API to fetch information about themes and plugins. This API has a variety of parameters for searching based on slug, author, etc. The following example shows how to fetch the metadata about a specific plugin based on its slug:

https://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.2/?action=plugin_information&request[slug]=akismet

No authentication is required, so you can click the above link to see the results in your browser. Once you have the JSON, the last_updated field contains the date the plugin was last updated in the directory.

"last_updated":"2025-07-15 6:17pm GMT"

Here is an example call in PHP you can adapt into a plugin or snippet:

// Construct the URL
$slug = "akismet"
$url = "https://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.2/?action=plugin_information&request[slug]=$slug"

// Call the API
$response = wp_remote_get($url);
if (!is_wp_error($response)) {
 
    // Get the raw body of the response
    $body = wp_remote_retrieve_body($response)
    
    // Decode the body into a JSON object
    $data = json_decode($body);
    
    // Do something with last_updated
    if (!empty($data->last_updated)) {
        $last_updated = strtotime($data->last_updated);
        $one_year_ago = strtotime('-1 year');
        if ($last_updated < $one_year_ago) {
            echo 'Not updated in over a year!'
        }
    }
}

// Construct the URL
$slug = "akismet"
$url = "https://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.2/?action=plugin_information&request[slug]=$slug"

// Call the API
$response = wp_remote_get($url);
if (!is_wp_error($response)) {
 
    // Get the raw body of the response
    $body = wp_remote_retrieve_body($response)
    
    // Decode the body into a JSON object
    $data = json_decode($body);
    
    // Do something with last_updated
    if (!empty($data->last_updated)) {
        $last_updated = strtotime($data->last_updated);
        $one_year_ago = strtotime('-1 year');
        if ($last_updated < $one_year_ago) {
            echo 'Not updated in over a year!'
        }
    }
}

Reference

• WordPress.org API « WordPress Codex
• WordPress.org Plugin and Theme APIs – discusses the API in depth with code examples.
• wp_remote_get() – Function | Developer.WordPress.org
• wp_remote_retrieve_body() – Function | Developer.WordPress.org