The best WordPress photo gallery plugins (2024 edition)

Photos of your last vacation. Visuals of your ecommerce products. Your best drawings. A selection of your wonderful graphic creations.

So many things that you might want to highlight on your WordPress site, to make it appealing and so that you want to contemplate it a little longer?

Easy! Just with a photo gallery.

That said, you may be wondering how to go about creating one. We have selected 10 smart plugins for you to create your WordPress photo galleries!

Initially written in February 2022, this article was updated in March 2023.

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Why choose a photo gallery plugin on WordPress?

You may probably say:

“But hey, we can create photo galleries on WordPress manually!”

True.

However, if you are a non-HTML/CSS savvy WordPress user like me, I can assure you that you’ll be better off using a photo gallery plugin.

Whether you’re using the Gutenberg editor or the classic WordPress editor, your photo gallery customization options are indeed limited to selecting your visuals, organizing them in the gallery, and adding descriptions. That’s it!

In fact, for the rest, the design of your photo gallery will depend very much on your theme… and thus, your ability to enter the code, or your page builder if you use one.

If you work without a plugin, you will therefore be quite limited to:

• Control the borders, margins, shadows of your photo gallery.
• Set up dynamic hover effects.
• Customize the Lightbox feature (opening in a popup that display the photo in the full view).
• Classify your visuals automatically according to specific criteria (tags, categories, etc.).

In short, with a plugin, as is often the case, you make your life easier! If you choose the right plugin, which will not hinder the performance of your site, and which is not too much of a Rube Goldberg machine, you will definitely be happy with it.

And since we care about you, and we’re nice, we’ve put together a special WPMarmite selection of WordPress photo gallery plugins. No need to thank us, it’s all done from the heart. 😊

The 10 WordPress photo gallery plugins to consider

Whatever your photo gallery project is, we’ve selected the best of the best plugins for you to consider before you get started. Let’s go!

Envira Gallery

We start the selection with the Envira Gallery plugin, which is second to none of the other plugins in the list.

With a very user-friendly and seamless drag-and-drop interface, the free version of Envira Gallery already allows you to achieve well-customized photo gallery results.

Here you can choose many basic features, namely:

• The number of columns in which the images are displayed.
• The size of these images.
• The margins and borders.
• The Lightbox feature.

Enjoy the Lazy loading (image preloading) that the plugin offers, which allows your visitors to load images faster and has a very nice dynamic effect.

The extra bonus? A dedicated Gutenberg block, which allows you to easily access all the galleries you’ve created in a jiffy.

If you opt for the Pro version, you might be impressed by other features:

• The possibility to import your photos from Instagram, ideal for bloggers or influencers.
• Videos can be included in the galleries.
• Social sharing buttons displayed right on your photos.

Not to mention the multiple add-ons included in the Pro version, which can allow you to import your photos from Dropbox, Pinterest, add a watermark on your visuals, protect them with a password, or sell them directly via WooCommerce.

If you’re a photographer, there’s no doubt that Envira Gallery will be your cup of tea.

Price of the Pro plugin: from $29

Photo Gallery by 10Web

With the Photo Gallery by 10Web plugin, you’ll be amazed by the number of features available in the free version.

While the basic features of a WordPress photo gallery plugin (such as image size or Lightbox) are all there, other more advanced ones are quite nice. For example:

• Image preloading, which prevents visitors from waiting for your photos to show up.
• Features designed for photographers: the watermarking tool as well as the right-click image protection are quite powerful.
• The comment feature that can be activated in the galleries themselves.
• The possibility to prevent the indexing of gallery pages: an essential feature to avoid duplicate content so hated by SEO and Google, if you only publish your photos inside pages or posts.

As for the layout, the free version already offers 3 choices: two sliders and a mosaic. You can also choose a light or a dark theme.

Now, you may probably ask what additional values the Premium version will offer. Well, there are quite a lot of nice features.

There are 4 additional layouts, which make the gallery format more dynamic, as well as features dedicated to social networks (import from Instagram, Likes counters on photos, social sharing buttons…).

Let’s not miss the tagging system, which allows you to organize your photos simply within a plugin. Let’s be frank, that is already very user-friendly.

Price of the Premium plugin: from $30

FooGallery

Our third plugin is impressive, for just the number of features available in the free version.

Here are some of the most significant ones:

• 6 different layouts — a wide choice for a free plugin.
• Extensive customization options: mouseover, borders, margins, filter colors…
• Generation of optimized images for Retina screens.
• Image sorting according to different criteria: date, alphabetical order, or even at random.

Please note that to open your images in a Lightbox, you will need to download the free FooBox add-on.

High-five also for the handy Gutenberg block, as well as the cache option available from the plugin settings for HTML and CSS. You can clear them separately, thus reducing the loading time.

The Premium version of FooGallery may sound attractive for you because of its infinite scrolling of the gallery, better effects on mouseover, or the possibility to add videos to the gallery.

Price of the Premium plugin: from $33.99 per year

Everest Gallery

With its colorful and bold design interface, Everest Gallery is probably one of the most pleasant plugins in our selection for building WordPress photo galleries.

You can preview the look of your gallery directly in the settings: very useful if you are visual oriented.

True, the free version of Everest Gallery only offers two layouts (grid and tiles). However, you can display your photos in a very nice and customized way with the other features, also by:

• Defining the number of columns in your gallery.
• Choosing among 5 dynamic hover effects.
• Adding clickable links and your social networks.
• Selecting one of the 5 different Lightbox themes.

All in all, simple, but effective.

Great potential at a decent price: the Premium version of Everest Gallery offers many more layouts, hover effects, filters and additional settings options.

Price of the Premium plugin: $21

Portfolio Gallery

Looking for a plugin with which you can create very simple WordPress photo galleries? Well, consider Portfolio Gallery.

With very few options available, you’ll focus on the basics: custom borders, shadows around the gallery images, and the image size.

The free version is already pretty interesting, that you can create categories to filter the images in the galleries easily. Super useful when you have many images to display.

Want to know more about the Premium version? You will discover:

• Additional layouts, quite basic but nice.
• Many more hover and loading effects.
• Different Lightbox options.

Premium plugin price: $39

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NextGEN Gallery

With NextGEN Gallery, we’re obviously moving toward a heavyweight WordPress photo gallery: the plugin has 500K+ active installations.

Its has definitely plentiful of free customization features. You can edit:

• Image dimensions
• Clickable links
• Image quality
• The watermarks to add
• Ajax pagination
• Title and description display
• Automatic slideshow with transition effects…

It’s easy to integrate your galleries in your pages and posts with the dedicated Gutenberg block.

But beware: NextGEN Gallery can sometimes be a real Rube Goldberg machine, with a rather complex interface which is difficult to master.

Its user-friendliness leaves much to be desired, but it is probably the most comprehensive plugin compared to other Premium versions on this list.

By paying for the plugin, you can have features like social sharing buttons, various layouts, image comment feature in galleries, Twitter Cards, and mouseover options to display text.

If you have a clear idea of what kind of gallery you want to create, and that you have the budget and are not afraid of a somewhat barbaric interface, go for it.

Price of the Premium plugin: from $49

Gmedia Photo Gallery

Want a WordPress photo gallery which speaks for itself? Let’s see what Gmedia Photo Gallery has to offer.

In terms of design, you can have 5 templates available in the free version.

At first glance, this plugin is quite complex, but it quickly provides you with interesting photo sorting features. You will be able to select and display them according to date, author, categories, tags… Very useful when you have to manage a large number of pictures.

The Premium version of Gmedia Photo Gallery will give you the choice of many other gallery templates, which can be installed directly from the plugin settings.

We like two Premium features in particular:

• The possibility to create and save gallery templates, with predefined custom options.
• The iOS application of the plugin, with which we can create or edit galleries directly on phones and tablets.

These mouth-watering options will undoubtedly appeal to those who use photo galleries often, like photographers or bloggers.

Premium plugin price: $29.99

GT3 Gallery

Are you using Elementor or WPBakery (formerly Visual Composer) for your website? You will like GT3 Gallery, which has its own dedicated module built-in to these two page builders.

Besides, just with the free version, you can create quite unique WordPress photo galleries in a modern and user-friendly interface:

• Possible to create up to 9 columns in the galleries.
• Different image ratios can be used.
• You can integrate videos.

This plugin, just like Justified Gallery, works with the native WordPress gallery: this ensures a better performance and a lightweight website.

In the Pro version, there are more choices of layout, and Lazy loading ensures a pleasant gallery experience for your visitors.

You will also be able to disable right click on your images, as well as customize a more fine-tuned Lightbox format.

Price of the Pro plugin: $45

Image Photo Gallery Final Tiles Grid

Here is another plugin that its free version might be just right for you, given its interesting customization options.

In Image Photo Gallery Final Tiles Grid (phew, hang on to the name), you will get for free:

• Advanced customization: margin width, image sizes, number of columns, customizable title and subtitle color.
• Different types of Lightbox.
• Icons for sharing on social networks.

By upgrading to Premium, you will be able to switch to more powerful options.

But above all, you will be able to generate photo galleries automatically from your featured images, or from your WooCommerce products. Pretty interesting format for presenting a selection of key products or items.

Premium plugin price: $24.99

Modula Image Gallery

With Modula Image Gallery, nothing could be easier than to create your own WordPress photo gallery.

In the free version, with just a few clicks, you can manage:

• The size of the images.
• The margin between them.
• The opening of images in a Lightbox.
• The display of the title and description.
• The font of these texts…

Its Gutenberg block is really handy, and we especially like the display of the social network sharing on mouseover (an option that many plugins do not offer in the free version).

By upgrading to the paid version, you can enjoy many additional hover effects and layouts, enabling a more advanced customization. You will also be able to integrate your videos in your galleries.

Finally, let’s not forget its integration with WooCommerce, which is very useful when you want to display the products of your online store in a dynamic and unique way.

Price of the Premium plugin: from $39

So, which WordPress photo gallery plugin should I choose?

You have a website with classic WordPress photo gallery? Make your choice based on the design that each of these plugins can provide, as well as their price.

However, some plugins are more or less advisable if you have specific requirements:

• If you are a photographer, we recommend Envira Gallery to protect your photos with watermark and right click disable features.
• If you are a visual artist, choose Justified Gallery or Everest Gallery Lite which have a preview option.
• If you have a WooCommerce store, and want to display a gallery of some of your products, choose Modula Image Gallery or Image Photo Gallery Final Tiles Grid.

Do you have some cool WordPress photo galleries to show us? Why don’t you show us in the comments? We’ll read them all, as always. I promise! 

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About the author

WPMarmite Team

WPMarmite helps beginners get the best out of WordPress with in-depth tutorials and honest reviews. Meet the founder, Alex, and his team right here.