5 of the Best Free Table of Contents WordPress Plugins

Becoming a better writer or content creator takes a lot of effort, time, and practice. But if someone offered you a shortcut to instantly make your content work harder for you, would you take it? A table of contents plugin can do just that.

While it may take some time to perfect your content writing skills, one way to instantly enhance your content is to make it easier to digest and more accessible to your readers, and a great way to do that is to give your readers a table of contents (TOC). 

No one enjoys reaching a webpage with the information they are seeking only to have a hard time finding what they are looking for. Adding a TOC to your content gives users an overview of its contents and structure, and it allows readers to jump directly to a specific section of a post or page.

Not only does it help readers find what they need faster, but a table of contents makes your page or post look more professional. On top of that, it’ll help your SEO ranking and hopefully drive more traffic to your site.

It might sound like a lot of work, but thanks to some super useful plugins, adding a TOC can be accomplished in seconds.

• Best Free Table of Contents Plugins
  • Easy Table of Contents
  • Lucky WP Table of Contents
  • Ultimate Blocks 
  • Rich Table of Contents
  • Heroic Table of Contents
• Final Thoughts

Best Free Table of Contents Plugins 

There’s no shortage of options for TOC plugins available for WordPress sites, but some pack more of a punch than others. And while there are some TOC plugins that will make you pay for a license, below are several free plugins that will meet the needs of even advanced WordPress users.

Easy Table of Contents

Capable of working with the Classic, Gutenberg, Divi, Elementor, WPBakery Page Builder and Visual Composer page editors, this table of contents plugin has racked up over 200,000 installations and has a solid 4.5 stars. It’s not hard to see why.

It also has some really great customization options. Users can assign themes to their TOCs, and if none of the themes match their style, there’s an option to create your own theme with custom border, background, and link colors. You can also choose between decimal, numeric, roman, or none for your bullet format, as well as make your TOC hierarchical or not, which places lower priority headings under higher priority ones.

Plus, you can exclude headers if you choose, toggle TOCs on and off on a post-by-post basis, or place TOCs in the sidebar as a widget. 

Lucky WP Table of Contents

It doesn’t have as many installations as the one mentioned before (40,000+), but this table of contents plugin rocks an impressive five-star rating.

Lucky WP Table of Contents works with Classical and Gutenberg editors and offers automatic insertion of TOCs based on headings as well as the option to configure post types and positions.

On top of that, the code for all TOCs is instantly ready for use by Google snippets on results pages. options to display linear or hierarchical view 

The plugin also gives users some cool customization options. It allows users to choose between linear or hierarchical display views, but also lets you get more granular changing things like the title, font sizes, width, colors, items font size, and more all from the control panel.

Additionally, users are able to choose from four primary color schemes for their TOC: dark, light, transparent, and white.

Ultimate Blocks

With a perfect five-star rating on the WordPress Plugins Marketplace, this Gutenberg Blocks plugin is certainly worth checking out. The table of contents block is just one of more than 40 blocks included in the plugin making Ultimate Blocks an all-inclusive blocks plugin. And while the TOC isn’t necessarily the primary selling point for Ultimate Blocks, that doesn’t mean it’s an afterthought.

With a couple clicks users are able to generate a TOC directly from their headings, taking the work out of putting a TOC together. If your headings are done correctly, adding a TOC can be accomplished in less than 30 seconds.

One of the only knocks here is that this is a Gutenberg plugin, meaning it only works on the Gutenberg editor. So if you’re still using the WordPress Classical Editor, you might want to check out other options.

Rich Table of Contents

With a humble 9,000 installs but a solid 4.5 star rating, this plugin focuses on design and ease of use, offering a real-time preview for TOCs so you can see what your TOC will look like before applying changes.

It also allows you to assign your TOC a custom title, select the headings it displays, change the font of your indexes, customize the frame, add animation, as well as choose the colors for titles, text, back buttons, borders, h2s, h3s and “back to table of contents” button background.

If that’s not enough, Rich Table of Contents offers more advanced settings like changing the button location, excluding post or page ids, or telling pages not to load plugin CSS.

Heroic Table of Contents 

This plugin might not have as many installations as the previously mentioned ones (only around 5,000), but it is a great option if you want a basic TOC plugin. 

Heroic Table of Contents automatically scans your content for headings and creates the TOC based on that. It provides the option to hide or edit out parts you would like to keep out of the table, as well as move the section wherever you need it most. Its design is also responsive, so if you continue to modify your content you do not have to re-edit your TOC.

The main drawback to this plugin is that it has a limited amount of styles for your TOC, and the colors also cannot be changed. 

Final Thoughts 

Adding a table of contents to your posts and pages is a great way to make information easier to find and digest for your readers, while simultaneously helping your SEO ranking. 

And thanks to awesome plugins like the ones mentioned above, enhancing your content with TOCs is as easy as a couple of clicks. Simply search for and install the plugin of your choice and you’re good to go. 

Which plugin you should use really depends on what you want from your TOC. Your specific needs should determine which plugin would benefit you the most.But if you would like some more guidance, you can reach out to one of our WordPress experts who will be standing by 24/7/365. We’re always happy to help.