Wordfence charges $149 a year for detection you can have free

Four things that cost nothing here

• Current malware signatures. Every Segurium install reads the same detection feed the moment it updates. On Wordfence, day-one detection is the $149-a-year plan and the free plugin runs a month behind. This is the whole argument in one line.
• Country blocking. Free here, with a confirm-or-revert step so a mistake cannot lock you out of your own admin. On Wordfence it needs Premium.
• Security headers. Three presets plus custom values, free. Wordfence does not ship this at all, so the usual answer is a second plugin.
• Cleanup that keeps the file. 3 files every 30 days on the free plan, and the theme or plugin carries on working afterwards. Wordfence's free repair overwrites from the WordPress.org original where one exists, and offers Delete where one does not.

Both products ship two-factor authentication, brute-force protection and integrity checking against WordPress.org at no cost. Checked against Wordfence's own pricing page and plugin description on 7 August 2026.

What it costs over three years

On one site, that is $210 back over three years if you take Pro, or $447 if the free plan covers you. Segurium Free already gives you same-day detection, which is the part Wordfence charges for.

Why people go looking

Free detection arrives late, on purpose. Wordfence puts it on their own pricing page: a 30-day delay on firewall rules and malware signatures for anyone not paying. Their plugin description says it twice more. It is a fair way to fund a research team. It also means that for a month, the free plugin is not looking for the thing they already know about.

Real-time costs $149 a year. That buys the live feed, the Premium IP blocklist, country blocking and the audit log. If current signatures were the only thing you wanted, you are also buying three other things.

Cleanup means overwrite or delete. Wordfence repairs a file by replacing it with the pristine copy from WordPress.org. That is the right move and it works well, right up to the point where the infected file never came from WordPress.org. Then the button on offer is Delete, and Delete on a theme file takes the site down with it.

How the cleanup actually works

Segurium hashes every file on your server and checks each hash against a cloud database of known-good and known-bad files. Around 94% of your files are settled by the hash alone and never leave the server. A lookup takes about 24 milliseconds, which is why a full scan does not sit on your CPU for an hour.

Detection is not a paid tier. Free and Pro read the same feed at the same moment. The only thing money changes is how many files you may clean.

When a file comes back infected, you click Fix. For an injection into an otherwise-working file, Segurium fetches a cleaned version of that exact file, so your theme keeps rendering and your plugin keeps loading. A file that is nothing but malware becomes zero bytes at the same path. When no clean version can be produced, the cleanup stops and leaves the file exactly as it found it.

The original goes into an encrypted backup on your own server before any of that happens, and one click puts it back. You can look at the malware it removed before you decide. Nothing about a cleanup is one-way.

Separately, an integrity scan compares every core, plugin and theme file against the canonical upstream copy of the exact version you have installed, and restores anything that drifted. While the file is clean that is unlimited on the free plan and never touches your cleanup count.

Bulk Fix All ships on every install, free, with a preflight preview so you can see exactly what it will touch before it touches anything. Pro at $79 a year lifts the cleanup limit and turns on unattended fixing, so a scheduled scan cleans without you opening the dashboard.

Side by side

Wordfence prices checked at wordfence.com on 7 August 2026. Check them again before you decide, because they are theirs to change.

What Segurium does not do

Five things, and you should read them before you switch rather than after.

• No firewall in front of WordPress. Wordfence can load before WordPress does, so a blocked request never reaches your theme. Ours filters inside WordPress, one layer later. The rules overlap; the timing does not. If you are under sustained attack and CPU is the bottleneck, theirs is the better tool and you should keep it.
• No curated IP blocklist. Their Premium list covers more than 40,000 known threat actors and updates continuously. We have nothing equivalent. You write your own IP and CIDR rules.
• No security audit log. Wordfence Premium records changes in the sensitive corners of your site and stores them off-box. We do not have this today.
• Nobody cleans it for you. Wordfence Care at $590 a year and Response at $1,250 a year put their people on your site, with a one-hour response target on Response. Nobody at Segurium logs into yours, ever. That is most of the price difference, and if you want a phone number during an incident you should buy theirs.
• No track record. Wordfence has been on WordPress.org since 2012 with five million installs and 94 out of 100 across nearly 5,000 ratings. Segurium arrived in July 2026 with none. The free plan exists so you can judge it on your own site rather than on our word.

Who should switch, and who should not

Switch if you run the free version of Wordfence and the 30-day delay bothers you now that you have read about it. Switch if an injection landed in a custom theme and Delete was the only button on offer. Switch if country blocking and security headers are what you actually wanted and $149 a year is a lot to pay for them.

Do not switch if you rely on the pre-WordPress firewall, the Premium IP blocklist, or the audit log. Do not switch if you want a person to handle the next incident.

Running both is free and it is what we would do. Wordfence Free in front for the firewall, Segurium behind it for detection and cleanup. Disable one of the two malware scanners so you are not scanning the same files twice.

What moving across involves

Segurium detects an existing Wordfence install and offers to import from it. It does not take everything, and it tells you which is which before it writes anything.

Imported for you:

• Scan exclusion patterns, merged with any you already have.
• Your blocked countries.
• Your manually blocked IP addresses, merged.
• Users who had TOTP two-factor set up, so they do not re-enrol.

Brute-force settings and firewall rules are not imported. Those you set again by hand, which takes a few minutes.

1. Install Segurium from WordPress.org.
2. Accept the service disclosure. Nothing contacts our service before you do.
3. Open the Migration tab, review what it found, and apply it.
4. Re-enter your brute-force thresholds and any firewall rules.
5. Run a full scan and an integrity scan.
6. Deactivate Wordfence once you are happy, or keep it for the firewall and turn its scanner off.

What leaves your server, in plain terms

Scanning is opt-in. Until you accept the disclosure on the plugin page, Segurium does not contact our service and does not scan.

Files are checked by SHA-256 first. A file has its bytes sent in two cases: when its hash is one we have never seen, which in practice is about 6% of them, and when you clean it and we build the replacement. Everything else is settled by hash.

Samples we do receive are kept for up to 365 days and then deleted by an automated purge, and an analyst can delete one sooner once it has been triaged. Our privacy policy lists every retention period we hold to.

Our servers are in the European Economic Area and Segurium is run from Spain, so GDPR applies to us directly rather than reaching us through an adequacy decision. Two subprocessors sit outside the EEA, for payments and for support email. Both are covered by Standard Contractual Clauses and both are named in the privacy policy.

We do not track your visitors. Segurium looks at files and login attempts.

Questions

What does the 30-day delay actually cost me?

Wordfence writes a rule the day they see a new attack. On the free plan you receive it a month later. For that month your site is open to something they already know about. Segurium ships one detection feed to every install, so a free site and a paid site see the same verdict at the same time.

Wordfence can already repair infected files. Why switch?

It repairs by overwriting the file with the original from WordPress.org, which works whenever the file came from there. When the injection lands in a custom theme, a paid plugin, or anything else with no upstream copy, the remaining options are delete it or open an editor. Segurium asks for a cleaned version of that specific file instead.

Is Segurium's firewall as good as Wordfence's?

No. Wordfence loads before WordPress does, so it can drop a request before your site executes any code. Ours runs inside WordPress and filters requests PHP has already accepted. Same rules, one layer later. If your site is under sustained attack and CPU is your bottleneck, theirs is the better tool.

Can I run both?

Yes, and some people should. Keep Wordfence Free for the firewall and use Segurium for detection and cleanup. Turn off one of the two malware scanners so you are not scanning the same files twice. That combination costs nothing and covers both layers.

Will my Wordfence settings come across?

Some of them. The importer moves your scan exclusions, blocked countries, blocked IPs, and any users who had TOTP two-factor set up. Brute-force settings and firewall rules are not imported yet, so you reconfigure those by hand.

What if I install it and it finds nothing?

Then you have a second opinion for free and you have lost twenty minutes. There is no card to enter and no trial to cancel.