When WP admin shows a plugin update but WP-CLI doesn't — making automation see proprietary updaters

You open the "Updates" page in WordPress admin and see that Elementor Pro / ACF Pro / vk-blocks-pro have updates available. Then you run wp plugin update --all from your automation, and those exact plugins don't update. The asymmetry — "the admin sees it; WP-CLI doesn't" — traces back to how WordPress detects updates and how premium plugins layer proprietary update mechanisms on top of that. Here's the mechanism and how an automation tool can adapt. WordPress update detection is held by a transient cache WordPress doesn't decide "is there an update?" on every request. It caches the answer in the wp_options table as a transient, valid for up to 12 hours. The key entries: _site_transient_update_plugins — latest plugin versions _site_transient_update_themes — themes _site_transient_update_core — core If those transients are stale, even a version that just shipped on wordpress.org reads as "no update needed." WP-CLI consults the same transients, so stale cache = WP-CLI misses the update too . In one customer environment on ConoHa WING, we reproduced "version X is on wordpress.org, WP-CLI doesn't see it" directly. Trap 1 and fix 1 — force-refresh the transients before listing updates The first step was simple: at the start of a maintenance run, delete the three transients before querying the update list . def _flush_update_transients ( self , conn , wp_cmd , wp_path , site_name ): """ Delete update transients between DB backup and update step """ for t in ( " update_plugins " , " update_themes " , " update_core " ): conn . run ( f " { wp_cmd } transient delete { t } --path= { wp_path } " , warn = True , hide = True , ) Deleting the transients triggers a rebuild on the next wp plugin list --update=available . During the rebuild, WordPress reaches out to wordpress.org, so the returned list reflects the current release state . That handled the "we were just reading a stale cache" cases. But it didn't help with premium plugins. Trap 2 — with --skip-plugins , Pro updater filt