The Updated 2025 List of Must-Have Drupal Modules

The Drupal community is the engine that drives its power, with contributed modules providing functionality that far outstrips what comes in the core package. But with thousands of modules to choose from, knowing where to start can be daunting.

As the VP of Digital Experience at Acquia, we support Acquia.com and talk with customers about their sites and the common modules that they are using, it provides us a breadth of information about best practices.  We also have access to some of the smartest engineers and developers in the Drupal community.  We've updated this list to now be the Top 12 Drupal modules for your next site build.

These modules have a common thread: they take existing Drupal core functionality and enhance it for a smoother, more powerful experience for developers, content editors, and end-users.

The Developer's Toolkit: Build & Deploy with Confidence

These modules are essential for a modern, multi-environment development workflow.

1. Config Split I firmly believe that every Drupal build requires some degree of conditional configuration, even if that’s only to provide needed variation between local and production environments. Config Split is a critical component of every project I build. It allows you to define different sets of configuration that are only active in certain environments, preventing development modules from ever being enabled on production. I strongly recommend you incorporate it into your process.

2. Environment Indicator When you're juggling local, dev, stage, and prod environments, mistakes can happen. Environment Indicator is your safety net. When coupled with Config Split, this module can automatically display a colorful banner at the top of the page indicating which environment you are in. This is a great, friendly reminder that "THIS IS PROD" to help your administrative users take appropriate action.

3. Shield Your development and staging environments are not for public consumption. The last thing you want is to accidentally reveal something before it’s ready for prime time. Enter Shield. This module places a simple HTTP authentication challenge in front of your non-production sites. While more robust security solutions exist, Shield is the perfect, simple tool to keep unwanted traffic and search engine bots out of an environment.

The Admin & Content Editor Experience: Empower Your Users

A great site is one that's easy to manage. These modules dramatically improve the day-to-day experience for content creators.

4. Admin Toolbar Yes, Drupal ships with a stock Toolbar. No, it’s not particularly user-friendly. The Admin Toolbar module is a simple but transformative enhancement. It turns the admin menu into a fast, multilevel drop-down menu, allowing you to get to any administrative page in just a click or two. It’s not fancy, but it’s highly effective.

5. Field Group Unlike Paragraphs or Field Collection, Field Group doesn’t muck about with your Drupal data model. Instead, it allows you to easily group similar fields together on content entry forms using tabs, accordions, or simple fieldsets. This is a small enhancement that makes a massive difference in creating a clean, logical, and improved user experience for your content creators.

6. Diff Drupal’s core content moderation and revision tools work great. However, when you create a new draft, it isn't easy to see what has changed. The Diff module solves this by providing a much-improved interface that clearly highlights what text has been added, removed, or changed between revisions.

7. Webform (New Addition) While Drupal has a core contact form, it's very basic. The Webform module is the undisputed champion for building any kind of form imaginable—from simple contact forms to complex, multi-page surveys and applications. With an intuitive UI, conditional logic, and robust submission management, it is an essential tool for user interaction.

SEO & URL Management: Be Seen and Found

These modules are the non-negotiable foundation for a strong SEO strategy.

8. Pathauto Not to be confused with the Path module in core, Pathauto automatically generates clean, SEO-friendly URLs for your content based on patterns you define. For instance, you can automatically create a URL like /blog/my-post-title without ever having to type it manually. It’s an install-and-forget-it module that is fundamental to every site.

9. Redirect What happens when Pathauto changes a URL? You get a 404 error. The Redirect module is the perfect companion, automatically creating a redirect from the old path to the new one. A general rule: If Drupal controls the content, use the Redirect module to manage its path changes.

10. Simple XML Sitemap (New Addition) To help search engines like Google find and rank your content, you need to provide them with a map. The Simple XML Sitemap module automatically generates and maintains a sitemap that meets modern standards. It's highly customizable, works with multilingual sites, and is another essential "set it and forget it" tool for SEO.

Security & Performance: Harden and Speed Up Your Site

Protect your site from threats and ensure it loads quickly for your visitors.

11. Seckit (Security Kit) Last but not least is Seckit. This module allows you to implement several security-hardening options by modifying HTTP headers on your website. This helps protect your site from various attacks like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and clickjacking. Can you do this in other ways? Yes. Seckit just makes it so darn easy and convenient.

12. Lazy-load (New Addition) Site speed is critical for both user experience and SEO rankings. Lazy-load provides a massive performance boost by deferring the loading of images and iframes until they are scrolled into the user's viewport. This means your pages load faster, use less bandwidth, and feel much more responsive.

Bonus: AI & Beyond

These Drupal modules provide users with AI and additional functionality for content editors.

13. Drupal AI The Drupal AI module provides a framework for easily integrating Artificial Intelligence on any Drupal site using any kind of AI (from multiple vendors).

14. Acquia AI Provider Provides integration between your Drupal site and Acquia's hosted AI Gateway service, Acquia AI. requires the AI and Key modules.

15. Acquia Optimize Acquia Optimize is a module that implements the Acquia Optimize Quick Scan for editors in Drupal to see potential SEO improvements and accessibility issues on a page.