CrestaProject

FREE Crest Posts Widget is a simple but powerful WordPress Widget which displays your posts with thumbnail and many other options like the ability to show the date, the number of comments, to change the length of the excerpt, change the size of thumbnails and much more.
Some features:
<ul>
<li>Easy to use interface</li>
<li>Change post title heading tag</li>
<li>Display the date</li>
<li>Display the comments count</li>
<li>Choose thumbnail size</li>
<li>Choose excerpt lenght</li>
<li>Order posts by date, title, comment count and random</li>
<li>Filter posts by category</li>
</ul>

Plugin Homepage 
http://crestaproject.com/downloads/cresta-post-widget/

Cresta Post Widget FREE

Widget for show all posts or filter by category. Many options available including show thumbnail, excerpt, date and comments count.

Hector Cabrera

Let’s face it: WordPress’ default Recent Posts widget does the job as promised but it’s not very flexible. Things like excluding certain entries from the list or displaying recent posts by category can’t be done with the stock Recent Posts widget. Therefore, let me introduce Recently.
Recently is a WordPress widget that displays your site’s most recent posts. And it doesn’t stop there:
<h4>Main Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Multiple Recently lists – That is, you can have several Recently lists on your blog – each with its own settings!</li>
<li>Thumbnails! – Display a thumbnail of your recent posts! (see the <a href="https://github.com/cabrerahector/recently/wiki/3.-FAQ#how-does-recently-pick-my-posts-thumbnails" rel="nofollow ugc">FAQ section</a> for more details.)</li>
<li>Custom Post-type support – Want to show other stuff than just posts and pages, eg. Recent Products? <a href="https://github.com/cabrerahector/recently/wiki/3.-FAQ#i-want-to-have-a-recent-list-of-my-custom-post-type-how-can-i-do-that" rel="nofollow ugc">You can</a>!</li>
<li>Taxonomy filtering – List recent posts filtered by categories, tags, or custom taxonomies!</li>
<li>Use your own layout! – Recently is flexible enough to let you customize the look and feel of your recent posts list! (see <a href="https://github.com/cabrerahector/recently/wiki/3.-FAQ#how-can-i-use-my-own-html-markup-with-your-plugin" rel="nofollow ugc">customizing Recently’s HTML markup</a> and <a href="https://github.com/cabrerahector/recently/wiki/4.-Styling-the-list" rel="nofollow ugc">How to style Recently</a> for more.)</li>
<li>WordPress Multisite support – Each site on the network can have its own recent posts list!</li>
<li>Localization – Translate Recently to your own language (See <a href="https://github.com/cabrerahector/recently/wiki/3.-FAQ#i-want-to-translate-your-plugin-into-my-language--help-you-update-a-translation-what-do-i-need-to-do" rel="nofollow ugc">translating Recently into your language</a> for more info).</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/polylang/" rel="ugc">Polylang</a>/<a href="https://wpml.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">WPML 3.2+</a> support – Show the translated version of your recent posts!</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-popular-posts/" rel="ugc">WordPress Popular Posts</a> / <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-postratings/" rel="ugc">WP-PostViews</a> / <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/top-10/" rel="ugc">Top 10</a> support: – Display the views count of your recent posts!</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-postratings/" rel="ugc">WP-PostRatings</a> support. Show your visitors how your readers are rating your posts!</li>
</ul>
<h4>PSA: do not use the classic Recently widget with the new Widgets screen!</h4>
The classic Recently widget doesn’t work very well / at all with the new Widgets screen introduced with WordPress 5.8.
This new Widgets screen expects WordPress blocks instead of regular WordPress widgets. If you’re using the Recently widget on your block-based Widgets screen please replace it with the <a href="https://cabrerahector.com/wordpress/recently-4-0-new-recently-block-php-5-support-dropped-minimum-supported-wordpress-version-changed/" rel="nofollow ugc">Recently block</a>.
<h4>Support the Project!</h4>
If you’d like to support my work and efforts to creating and maintaining more open source projects your donations and messages of support mean a lot!
<a href="https://ko-fi.com/cabrerahector" rel="nofollow ugc">Ko-fi</a> | <a href="https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/cabrerahector" rel="nofollow ugc">PayPal</a>
Recently is now also on <a href="https://github.com/cabrerahector/recently" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a>!

Recently

A highly customizable, feature-packed Recent Posts widget!

Cresta Post Widget FREE vs Recently