Yes. Redirecting is free and open source under GPL v2. There are no license keys, paid tiers, or upsells. It is available from the WordPress.org plugin directory and from GitHub.

Does Redirecting support regex?

Yes. Redirecting supports full PCRE regex patterns for source URL matching, including capture group substitution in target URLs. This allows a single rule to handle entire URL families.

How does 404 tracking work?

Every 404 response is logged as an event with the URL, hit count, and timestamp. These events are viewable and filterable from the admin interface, and can be bulk-resolved by creating redirect rules directly from the 404 log.

What PHP version is required?

Redirecting requires PHP 8.1 or higher. It uses typed properties, enums, constructor promotion, and Composer-managed autoloading throughout. There are no legacy compatibility shims.

How is Redirecting different from the Redirection plugin?

Redirection is the long-established WordPress redirect plugin with a large user base. Redirecting is built for a modern PHP stack: it uses PHP 8.1 typed properties and enums, a proper JSON column schema instead of serialized PHP, and intercepts requests at the plugins_loaded hook before WordPress finishes loading — making it faster than plugins that hook in later. It is free, open source, and has no paid tiers.

Does the Redirecting plugin slow down WordPress?

No. Redirecting is designed for minimal performance impact. It intercepts requests at the plugins_loaded hook — before theme setup and query processing — so matched redirects exit WordPress early. Log writes are queued asynchronously rather than blocking the request, and the database schema uses indexed columns for fast lookups.

WordPress plugin · Free & open source

The redirect manager WordPress deserved from the start.

Redirecting handles 301s, 302s, and everything in between — full regex support, 404 tracking, and a request-interception architecture built for speed. It does what every redirect plugin does, faster, with cleaner code and a data model designed to grow.

Download free View on GitHub

WordPress.org directory Documentation Issue Tracker GPL v2

Tools › Redirecting

Redirects · 247 active

Source	Target	Type	Hits
/old-pricing	/pricing	301	2.4K
/blog/(.*)regex	/articles/$1	301	18K
/shop/*	/store	302	964
/promo-2023	410 Gone	410	311

312 404s tracked this week queued → posthog

Why another redirect plugin

The popular alternatives were built for an older web.

They were written for an older PHP and carry that weight. Redirecting is built for PHP 8, designed around a modern WordPress stack, and assumes your redirect data belongs somewhere more useful than a local database table.

Intercepts requests earlier in the WordPress load chain — before theme and query setup waste a single cycle.

PHP 8 native: typed properties, enums, constructor promotion, and Composer autoloading. No legacy shims.

Proper JSON columns instead of serialized strings — queryable, portable, and honest about its data.

Log writes are queued, not synchronous. Your redirects don't wait on a database write to fire.

Every redirect hit and every 404 is an event — available for external sync the moment it happens.

Features

Everything a redirect plugin should do.

Exact matches and full PCRE regex. 404s as events. Analytics, syncing, and alerting wired in from day one — not bolted on later.

01 · Core

Redirect management

Create and manage redirects without touching server config. Exact URL matching and full PCRE regex with capture-group substitution in target URLs.

02 · Tracking

404 tracking

Every 404 is logged as an event. View, filter, and bulk-resolve them straight from the admin interface — no guessing what's broken.

Coming soon

03 · Automation

Automated 404 fixing

Redirecting analyzes 404 patterns and suggests — or automatically creates — redirect rules. No manual triage queue to work through.

04 · Insight

Analytics

Hit counts, last-access timestamps, and traffic trends per redirect. Designed to sync outbound to your analytics platform of choice.

05 · Sync

Log syncing

Redirect and 404 events are queued for external sync. Push to PostHog, a time-series store, a webhook endpoint, or anything that accepts JSON.

06 · Alerting

Alerting

Define webhook endpoints; Redirecting emits the events and you wire up the rest. Works with Slack, PagerDuty, n8n, or any HTTP target.

Technical details

Built for engineers who read the source.

A modern stack, a sane schema, and a documented REST API. Here's exactly what's under the hood.

Request interception

Redirecting hooks at plugins_loaded — earlier than the template_redirect hook where most redirect plugins fire. WordPress is initialized, but the full query and theme setup haven't run yet. It's the safest early hook that still works reliably across hosting environments.

muplugins_loaded

plugins_loadedRedirecting fires

init

wp_loaded

template_redirectmost plugins fire

Roadmap A must-use plugin path is planned for installations that need to intercept before any regular plugin code runs.

Database schema

Four tables. No serialized PHP.

redirects

source varchar(2048)

action json

group_id fk

groups

id pk

name varchar

config json

logs

url varchar

synced_at ts

meta json

404s

url varchar

hits int

synced_at ts

Source URLs stored as VARCHAR(2048); action configuration as native JSON columns (MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.2+). Every log row carries a synced_at column and joins a sync queue from day one.

Match types

Match on more than the URL.

Action types

Redirect or refuse.

REST API

Every admin action is an endpoint.

# versioned, nonce-authenticated, manage_options only GET /wp-json/redirecting/v1/redirects
POST /wp-json/redirecting/v1/redirects
GET /wp-json/redirecting/v1/404s
POST /wp-json/redirecting/v1/sync

All admin functionality is exposed under /wp-json/redirecting/v1/. The React admin interface is its only consumer; every endpoint requires the manage_options capability and WordPress nonce authentication.

Frontend stack

A real app, not a settings page.

React 18TypeScriptTanStack QueryZodVite

Server state via TanStack Query, validation via Zod, bundled with Vite.

PHP requirements

PHP 8.1+or higher

Composer-managed autoloading
No legacy compatibility shims
Typed properties & enums throughout

Download

Free and open source.

Grab it from the WordPress.org directory, or pull the ZIP from GitHub. No license keys, no tiers, no upsell.

Recommended

WordPress.org

The easiest path. Install and auto-update directly from your WordPress admin, or download the packaged release.

Download from WordPress.org

GPL · v2

GitHub

Read the source, file issues, send PRs, or pull the latest ZIP from the release page. Built in the open.

Download ZIP from GitHub

Installation

Upload the redirecting directory to /wp-content/plugins/
Activate it via the WordPress plugin screen
Navigate to Tools › Redirecting

Or install directly from the WordPress admin plugin search.