SimpleTOC – Table of Contents Block

80 Quality Score

Active Installs

18/30

At roughly 10,000 active installs and a popularity score of 60 out of 30 weighted points, the plugin has a modest but meaningful user base, far smaller than category leaders like Spectra or TablePress.

Update Freshness

25/25

Maintenance scores a perfect 100 out of 25, reflecting that the plugin was last updated on 2026-06-24 and is tested against WordPress 7.0, which signals active and forward-compatible development.

User Rating

15/15

With a 100 out of 100 rating from 76 reviewers, every user who rated the plugin gave it top marks, indicating exceptionally high satisfaction among those who have tried it.

Support Health

8/15

Support health sits at 50 out of 15 weighted points, and with zero support threads opened or resolved, there is simply no track record to evaluate, which can be a risk for users who anticipate needing hand-holding.

WP Compatibility

15/15

Compatibility scores a perfect 100 out of 15, as the plugin requires only PHP 7.3 and WordPress 6.2 while being tested up to WordPress 7.0, making it compatible with the vast majority of modern WordPress installations.

Scores higher than 79% of indexed plugins

About

SEO-friendly Table of Contents Gutenberg block. No JavaScript or CSS by default.

Active Installs 10k+

Rating ★★★★½ 4.9/5

Last Updated 2026-09-18 6:43am GMT

Requires WordPress 6.2+

Tested Up To 7.1.1

Requires PHP 7.3+

✓ No known vulnerabilities

What It Does

SimpleTOC adds a Gutenberg block that generates a table of contents from your post's headings automatically. By default it ships with zero JavaScript and zero CSS, keeping page weight minimal and leaving styling entirely to your theme. It targets SEO-friendly output, producing crawlable anchor links rather than JS-rendered navigation.

Who It's For

This plugin is a strong fit for publishers of long-form content such as technical documentation, tutorials, legal pages, and research posts where heading navigation improves both readability and search snippet quality. It is especially appealing to performance-conscious site owners who want a table of contents without bloating their site with scripts and stylesheets. Developers building custom themes will also appreciate the headless, unstyled approach.

Who Should Skip It

If you want a table of contents with built-in styling, smooth scroll animations, or visual customization controls out of the box, you will be disappointed and should look at Easy Table of Contents instead. Sites needing advanced features like collapsible hierarchies, reading progress indicators, or automatic insertion across post types will also find this plugin too minimal.

The Bottom Line

SimpleTOC is a well-maintained, lightweight, accessibility-focused table of contents block that earns its 80.41 quality score through strong ratings and recent updates, despite a small install base and zero public support history. It is an excellent choice for developers and performance-focused publishers who are comfortable adding their own CSS, but casual users wanting a styled, feature-rich solution will be better served by Easy Table of Contents. The minimal footprint is its biggest selling point and its biggest limitation at the same time.

Pick Spectra if you want a table of contents bundled with a full Gutenberg block library and are already invested in that ecosystem, with the trade-off of added plugin weight.

TablePress 95/100

Pick TablePress when your primary need is building data tables rather than heading-based navigation, as it excels at structured tabular content.

Breadcrumb NavXT 88/100

Pick Breadcrumb NavXT if your navigation problem is site-wide breadcrumb trails rather than in-article table of contents.

Easy Table of Contents 87/100

Pick Easy Table of Contents when you want rich styling, smooth scrolling, and automatic insertion without writing custom CSS.

PDF Embedder 86/100

Pick PDF Embedder if your content is primarily PDF documents that need inline viewing rather than HTML heading navigation.