Choose Smooth Custom Cursor if you want one polished, free cursor with a hover reaction and don't need anything else. Choose Ultimate Cursor if you want more cursor types — text, image, icon, shape and eight animated effects — plus animated backgrounds, automatic touch and reduced-motion handling, and the option to grow into interactive hover and per-page cursors with Pro.
Disclosure: WPXERO makes Ultimate Cursor; this comparison covers Ultimate Cursor 2.5.1 and Smooth Custom Cursor 2.3.1. Everything said about Smooth Custom Cursor comes from its WordPress.org readme as of October 27, 2026. Check it before you choose — plugins change.
At a glance
| Ultimate Cursor | Smooth Custom Cursor | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free; optional Pro from $24.99/yr | Free |
| Cursor types | Text, image, icon, shape, animated | 9 styles, one of them an image cursor |
| Built-in icons | 113 | — |
| Animated effects | 8 (Bubble, Splash, Snowflake, Trail, Character, Rainbow, Click Spark, Click Particles) | Bubble and character trails, water, sparkle and bloom styles |
| Free hover reaction | Ring grows on shape cursors | Magnetic ring, growing circle with text |
| Full hover (colour, glow, labels) | Pro | Glow Circle shows custom text |
| Animated backgrounds | 2, free | — |
| Several cursors / targeting | Pro | One style site-wide |
| Touch devices | Hidden automatically, scripts not loaded | Option to disable |
| Reduced motion | Respected | Not mentioned |
| Active installs (WordPress.org) | 3,000+ | 300+ |
What Smooth Custom Cursor does well
Smooth Custom Cursor is built around nine distinct styles, each with its own settings section and a live preview box:
- Dot + Ring — a lagging ring with a magnetic hover.
- Glow Circle — a small circle that grows and shows custom text on hover.
- Diamond — tilts with the direction of movement.
- Water Arrow — a hollow arrow that fills and drains like liquid.
- Bubble Trail and 6. Character Trail — a normal arrow that releases bubbles or letters.
- Sparkle → Arrow — morphs into an arrow-in-circle on hover.
- Seed → Bloom — a seed with a trailing vine that blooms on hover, with an optional magnetic button pull.
- Image Cursor — any image from your Media Library.
It's written in plain JavaScript with no dependencies, hides the cursor when the mouse leaves the window, and is free. If one of these nine is exactly the look you want, especially Dot + Ring or Glow Circle with their hover reactions, it does the job without an upgrade.
Watch out for: one style for the whole site, no page or element targeting, no background effects, and no mention of reduced-motion support in its readme. Mobile is handled by an option you need to remember to switch on.
What Ultimate Cursor does differently
Ultimate Cursor is a toolkit rather than a set of fixed styles. The free plugin includes:
- Five cursor types: your own text, an image, one of 113 icons, one of 5 shapes with colour, size and border settings, or an animated effect.
- Eight animated effects: Bubble, Splash, Snowflake, Trail, Character, Rainbow, Click Spark and Click Particles, each with a ready-made style.
- Two animated backgrounds: Antigravity (floating particles) and Light Pillar (a glowing vertical light).
- A live preview dashboard with nothing locked or greyed out.
It's also built to stay out of the way:
- Touch devices: the custom cursor is hidden automatically, and its scripts aren't downloaded on devices where it's hidden.
- Reduced motion: animations follow the visitor's operating-system setting.
- Loading: each effect is a separate file, downloaded only when your configuration uses it.
- Builders and caching: works with the block editor, Elementor, WPBakery and Divi, doesn't load inside builder editors, and includes compatibility handling for WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, SiteGround Optimizer, Perfmatters, WP-Optimize and Cloudflare Rocket Loader.
- Privacy: the cursor and backgrounds make no external requests.
You can try every effect in your browser on the Ultimate Cursor demo site before installing.
Hover reactions: the real difference
Hover is where visitors feel a custom cursor most, so it's worth being precise.
- Smooth Custom Cursor (free): Dot + Ring pulls magnetically, Glow Circle grows and shows your text, and Sparkle and Seed styles change shape on hover.
- Ultimate Cursor (free): the ring of a shape cursor grows over links and buttons.
- Ultimate Cursor Pro: Interactive Hover lets the cursor scale, change background and text colour, glow, pull toward the element, use blend modes and show labels like "Open", "Play" or "Type", and you choose which CSS selectors it reacts to.
If you want a hover label for free on a single cursor, Smooth Custom Cursor's Glow Circle covers it. If you want different labels over different elements — "View" on portfolio items, "Play" on videos — that's Ultimate Cursor Pro.
Targeting and several cursors
Smooth Custom Cursor applies one style everywhere. Ultimate Cursor's free version also applies one cursor and one background to the whole site, but Pro can run several cursor and background configurations at once and target each by page, CSS selector or HTML element — for example a quiet dot site-wide and an image cursor only over your gallery.
Which should you choose?
| If you want… | Choose |
|---|---|
| One free cursor with a hover reaction, nothing else | Smooth Custom Cursor |
| A text, icon or shape cursor in your brand colours | Ultimate Cursor |
| Click effects (spark or particles) | Ultimate Cursor |
| An animated background from the same plugin | Ultimate Cursor |
| Automatic touch and reduced-motion handling | Ultimate Cursor |
| Hover labels, magnetic pull and glow on chosen elements | Ultimate Cursor Pro |
| Different cursors on different pages | Ultimate Cursor Pro |
Both are free to try, so the fastest test is to install each on a staging site and move your mouse around your own pages. For the wider field, see our custom cursor plugin comparison.