IndexNow WordPress Plugin Picks by Logs and Price

For most WordPress sites the best IndexNow plugin is the one already doing your SEO. Rank Math and SEOPress include IndexNow in their free versions, Microsoft's own IndexNow plugin is free and does nothing else, and Yoast and All in One SEO only offer it on paid plans. The real difference between them is not submission, which they all handle. It is whether you can see what happened after the URL went out. Only Rank Math, CrawlWP and Microsoft's plugin keep a log of response codes, and only CrawlWP Premium checks whether pages were actually indexed.

Everything below was read from each vendor's own documentation, pricing page and wordpress.org listing in October 2026. We do not sell a WordPress plugin and none of these vendors pays us. We sell an indexing and index monitoring tool for sites you own, which sits on top of whichever plugin you choose, and this article says where a plugin alone is enough.

IndexNow WordPress plugins compared

Install counts tell you what most people already run. Yoast lists 10 million plus active installs, Rank Math 4 million plus, All in One SEO 2 million plus, SEOPress 300,000 plus, Microsoft's IndexNow plugin 100,000 plus and CrawlWP 30,000 plus. If you already have one of the first four, switching SEO plugins just for IndexNow is rarely worth it.

Which WordPress plugin is best for IndexNow?

Rank Math, for most sites. It ships IndexNow in the free version, submits automatically for the post types you choose, lets you bulk submit from the Posts list, and keeps a History tab that shows the response code for every request. That last part matters more than anything else on this list, because a broken key file fails silently in every plugin that does not log.

If you are not on Rank Math, the answer depends on what you already run:

• On Yoast SEO Free or All in One SEO Lite: add Microsoft's free IndexNow plugin rather than upgrading. It does one job, generates and hosts its own key, and skips noindex pages.
• On SEOPress: use its built-in IndexNow. It is free, auto-pings on publish, update and delete, and caps itself at 10,000 URLs a day.
• On Yoast Premium or AIOSEO Pro already: turn on the IndexNow feature you are paying for, then add a way to check results, because neither documents a submission log.
• Need to know what got indexed, not just what was sent: CrawlWP Premium is the only plugin here that checks index status, and a monitoring tool outside WordPress does the same across many sites.

Does Yoast SEO support IndexNow for free?

No. Yoast added IndexNow to Yoast SEO Premium in 2022 and its settings page still labels the feature "IndexNow (Premium)". With Premium enabled, Yoast says it will "automatically ping the participating search engines whenever you publish, update, or delete a post." Premium costs $118.80 a year for one site. If IndexNow is the only reason to upgrade, the free Microsoft plugin does the same submission job alongside Yoast Free.

Is IndexNow free in All in One SEO?

Not in the free Lite version. AIOSEO's documentation says "The IndexNow feature is available to customers with a Basic plan or above for All in One SEO Pro." Basic is $49.50 for the first year for one site and renews at $99. The key is generated for you, and you can regenerate it under General Settings, Webmaster Tools, IndexNow. The only check AIOSEO documents is opening your key file URL in a browser to see that it loads.

Does Rank Math IndexNow work in the free version?

Yes. Rank Math states that "The IndexNow API submission is available in Rank Math Free out of the box", through the Instant Indexing module. It submits when posts are published, modified or deleted, skips noindex URLs, and offers a bulk action called "Instant Indexing: Submit Pages" in the Posts list. Its History tab records each response code, from 200 and 202 through 400, 403, 422 and 429.

One catch worth knowing. The History tab and the key settings only appear once Rank Math is switched to Advanced mode. People who stay in Basic mode see "Error submitting page to IndexNow" with no reason attached. We wrote up what each IndexNow error code means and how to fix it for exactly that case.

Do I need the IndexNow plugin if I use Rank Math?

No, and running both is a mistake. Two plugins submitting the same URL on every save doubles your requests, and repeated submissions of the same URL are the classic trigger for a 429 Too Many Requests response. IndexNow.org asks publishers to submit only when content has changed. Pick one submitter per site and disable IndexNow in the other.

The same goes for Bing's separate "Bing URL Submissions" plugin. Despite the name, it is not IndexNow. It uses the Bing Webmaster Submit URL API, needs an API key from a verified Bing Webmaster Tools account, and only reaches Bing. IndexNow submissions are shared among every participating engine, including Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and Yep. Agencies running IndexNow on many client sites, some of them not on WordPress, often skip plugins and call one IndexNow API with key setup checked per site instead.

What none of these plugins tell you

Every vendor on this list says some version of the same thing. Microsoft's plugin FAQ says indexing "is specific and dependent on each search engine's rules." Rank Math says crawling and indexing are "at the complete discretion of the participating search engine." IndexNow.org puts it most directly: "Submitting a URL does not guarantee immediate indexing."

So a green line in a plugin means the URL was delivered. It does not mean Bing kept the page, and it says nothing at all about Google, which does not use IndexNow. Three problems hide in that gap:

• Silent failures. Yoast and AIOSEO document no log, and Microsoft's plugin keeps only the last 20 successes and 20 failures. A key file deleted during a migration can reject weeks of posts before anyone looks.
• Received but not indexed. A page with a noindex tag, a canonical pointing elsewhere or a redirect is accepted by IndexNow and never indexed. The plugin reports success.
• Google is a separate question. Your IndexNow setup can be perfect while half your new posts are missing from Google.

The free first check is your key file. Open it in a private window and confirm it loads with the key and nothing else. If you would rather not depend on remembering to look, an uptime monitor pointed at the key file URL will tell you the day it starts returning a 404 or a login page, which is the most common way IndexNow quietly stops working after a redesign.

How to check if your IndexNow plugin is working

1. Load the key file. It lives at your domain followed by the key and .txt. It must return 200 to a logged-out visitor and contain only the key.
2. Read a real response code. In Rank Math, open Instant Indexing, then History. In Microsoft's plugin, open its recent submissions list. A 200 or 202 means received.
3. Look up submitted URLs in Bing. Bing Webmaster Tools has an IndexNow report covering your latest 1,000 submitted URLs with their index status and first indexed date.
4. Check Google separately. IndexNow does not reach Google, so use URL Inspection or a bulk checker for the pages that matter.

For one site and a few posts a week, those four steps are enough. For an agency with twenty WordPress clients, or a publisher pushing hundreds of URLs a day, doing them by hand stops happening after the second week. That is the job our IndexNow checker for your key file, submissions and Bing indexing does: it verifies the key before submitting, logs the response for every batch, and reads Bing's record for each URL alongside its Google status.

When a plugin is enough, and when it is not

A plugin is enough when you run one WordPress site, publish at a normal pace, and use Rank Math, SEOPress, CrawlWP or Microsoft's plugin so you can see response codes. Check the key file after any migration and you will catch most problems.

A plugin is not enough when the answer to "did it get indexed" carries money. That is usually one of three situations:

• Agencies managing many client sites. Every plugin works per site, so twenty clients means twenty dashboards and twenty places a key can break. Clients ask what was indexed, not what was sent.
• Stores and publishers with high volume. When hundreds of product or article URLs change a day, a 20-row log scrolls past the failure before anyone sees it.
• Teams that also care about Google. Plugins submit to Bing and friends. Knowing which pages Google is missing, and why, needs a bulk index checker that shows Bing and Google side by side.

Keep the plugin as the submitter. Add monitoring on top. Indexing connects to the sites you own, checks the IndexNow key, submits new and changed URLs, and reports index status per URL for Bing and Google with a plain-English reason for every missing page. Starter is $29 a month billed annually for about 2,000 URLs on one site, Growth is $47 for about 25,000 URLs with hourly monitoring and automatic resubmission, and Agency is $119 for about 150,000 URLs across many sites with white label reports. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free IndexNow plugin for WordPress?

Rank Math Free, if you want a full SEO plugin, because it includes IndexNow and a response code log. If you already use another SEO plugin, Microsoft's IndexNow plugin is free, focused and maintained by Bing, though its log only keeps the last 20 successes and 20 failures.

Does IndexNow in WordPress submit to Google?

No. Google does not use IndexNow. Every plugin here sends IndexNow submissions to the shared endpoint used by Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and Yep. CrawlWP and SEOPress also offer the Google Indexing API, which Google documents only for job posting and livestream pages. We compare every plugin that does in our Google Indexing API WordPress plugins roundup, including Rank Math's separate Instant Indexing for Google plugin.

Do I need a key file for IndexNow on WordPress?

Not by hand. IndexNow.org says that when your CMS or SEO plugin supports IndexNow, "you don't need a key file" of your own, because the plugin generates and serves it. It is still worth opening the key URL once, since security plugins and firewalls sometimes block it.

Can I use IndexNow with two plugins at the same time?

You can, but you should not. Both will submit every changed URL, which doubles your requests and invites 429 responses. Enable IndexNow in one plugin only.

Related reading: how to submit your site to Bing and whether Google uses IndexNow.