What Are Plantar Warts?

Plantar warts, also known as verruca plantaris, are small, rough bumps that form on the soles of your feet from a skin infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV). While they can cause significant discomfort or even pain when you walk, plantar warts are considered harmless or benign skin growths that do not impact your overall health.
Types of Plantar Warts
Solitary Plantar Wart As its name implies, a solitary plantar wart is a single wart on the bottom of the foot. It often increases in size over time and can form additional, “satellite” warts nearby if the HPV infection spreads.
Mosaic Plantar Warts When a cluster of several small plantar warts grow closely together, forming a kind of plaque, they’re called mosaic warts. They tend to be more difficult to treat than solitary warts.
Signs and Symptoms of Plantar Warts
- Discoloration, usually flesh-colored to yellow or gray-brown
- Pain, tenderness, or a sensation of a stone or swelling under the foot while walking or standing
- Pain or tenderness when squeezed
- Disruption in the natural skin lines and ridges of the foot’s skin
- Tiny black dots on the surface of the wart, which are clotted capillaries
- Pinpoint bleeding if cut (unlike calluses or corns)
Plantar warts are often found in areas of increased pressure, such as the heels and balls of your feet, and they may multiply over time. If they grow closely together and coalesce to form a mosaic wart, they may appear as a thickened, “cobblestoned” plaque.
Causes and Risk Factors of Plantar Warts
- HPV-1
- HPV-2
- HPV-27
- HPV-57
- Walk barefoot in areas where HPV is abundant, such as communal showers, locker rooms, bathrooms, and swimming pools
- Pedicure your nails with improperly sanitized tools
- Have cuts, cracks, or weak spots in the skin of the feet
- Are in close contact with someone who has warts
- Have a history of warts
- Share unwashed socks or shoes
How Are Plantar Warts Diagnosed?
A plantar wart diagnosis is usually straightforward, and is based on the wart’s appearance. To distinguish it from other similar skin lesions, such as corns and calluses, healthcare providers will look for signs that are indicative of plantar warts, particularly if the growth:
- Disrupts your natural skin lines and ridges
- Has a tiny black dot
- Bleeds when trimmed or shaved
Treatment and Medication Options for Plantar Warts
Many plantar warts eventually go away on their own, without leaving a blemish or scar. But because warts can be painful or persistent, healthcare providers sometimes recommend treatment.
- No treatment is known to be consistently effective for all people.
- Successful treatment of a wart does not prevent future warts, and warts often return after treatment.
- Few treatments treat the underlying HPV infection.
- Some treatments are painful and can leave blemishes.
- Complete wart removal requires repeated treatments.
Some other treatments include:
- Other types of acid, such as formic acid, glycolic acid, pyruvic acid, and citric acid
- Laser therapy, such as with a CO2 laser and pulsed-dye laser
- cantharidin (Ycanth), a topical chemical agent
- cantharidin-podophyllin-salicylic acid formulation
- Topical antivirals
- Immunosuppressant drugs injected into the wart
- Injected bleomycin, an antibiotic that is also used to treat several types of cancer
- 5-fluorouracil (Adrucil), a chemotherapy agent
- Minor surgery
- oral cimetidine (Tamaget)
- zinc and nitric complex
The effectiveness of these and other treatments vary between studies. For most treatments, patience is key, as they often require multiple sessions (except for treatments like surgery). Speak with your healthcare provider before attempting any treatment.
Prevention of Plantar Warts
- Don’t share towels, shoes, socks, and other personal items.
- Wear footwear in communal areas like showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms.
- Wash socks after you use them.
- Keep your feet clean and dry, including by wearing breathable socks and shoes.
- Avoid touching other people’s warts.
- Receive the quadrivalent HPV vaccine.
- Promptly treat current warts.
- Throw out pumice stones and other exfoliating tools you’ve previously used on your plantar warts.
- Disinfect your shoes with sprays or wipes.
Lifestyle Changes for Plantar Warts
If you’re dealing with plantar warts, various prevention tips can also speed up recovery and prevent spread, such as:
- Wash and change socks after wearing them.
- Use dedicated foot tools on your warts and sanitize them after each use.
- Keep your feet dry and wear breathable shoes.
- Don’t go barefoot in communal areas.
- Use medications for your wart as instructed.
- Take over-the-counter pain-relief drugs like acetaminophen (Tylenol), ibuprofen (Advil), and naproxen (Aleve) for pain.
How Long Do Plantar Warts Last?
Complications of Plantar Warts
Plantar warts are typically harmless, but they may cause minor complications, such as:
- Pain severe enough to affect the way you walk
- Self-consciousness
- Recurrence even after treatment
- Spread of warts on the foot and possibly to other parts of your body
Research and Statistics: Who Gets Plantar Warts?
- Children and adolescents, especially females
- Adult men
- White people
- Individuals with compromised immune systems, such as those with HIV or AIDS
- Athletes
- Manual laborers
You may be more likely to get plantar warts during winter months.
Related Conditions
Plantar warts are just one of many types of warts, which differ based on their cause (the specific HPV type), physical features, and location on the body. These include:
- Common warts
- Palmar warts, which are similar to plantar warts but occur on your palms (taken together, they are called deep palmoplantar warts)
- Flat warts
- Filiform warts, which usually occur on the face or neck
- Genital warts
- Butcher’s warts, which typically form on the hands of people who handle raw meat or fish
- Focal epithelial hyperplasia, or Heck’s disease, referring to warts inside your mouth
- Cystic warts, which also tend to appear on the soles of the feet
- Subungual and periungual warts, which appear under and around the fingernails and toenails
The Takeaway
- Plantar warts are common and uncomfortable — but also treatable.
- They normally resolve on their own over time, and early intervention can reduce their duration and how much they impact your life.
- Preventive steps and lifestyle changes, especially protecting your feet in public places, go a long way toward keeping plantar warts at bay.
Common Questions & Answers
Resources We Trust
- Cleveland Clinic: Can Duct Tape Remove Warts?
- Mayo Clinic: Tuesday Q and A: Several Treatments May Be Needed to Eliminate Plantar Warts
- American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons: Plantar Wart (Verruca Plantaris)
- American Podiatric Medical Association: Warts
- American Academy of Family Physicians: Warts and Wart Removal
- Witchey DJ, Witchey NB, Roth-Kauffman MM, et al. Plantar Warts: Epidemiology, Pathophysiology, and Clinical Management. De Gruyter Brill. February 1, 2018.
- Plantar Wart (Verruca Plantaris). American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons.
- Garcia-Oreja S, Alvaro-Afonso FJ, Garcia-Alvarez Y, et al. Topical Treatment for Plantar Warts: A Systematic Review. Dermatologic Therapy. June 2022.
- Dinulos JGH. Warts. Merck Manual. March 2025.
- Hekmatjah J, Farshchian M, Grant-Kels JM, et al. The status of treatment for plantar warts in 2021: No definitive advancements in decades for a common dermatology disease. Clinics in Dermatology. August 2021.
- Plantar Warts: Care Instructions. Kaiser Permanente. December 4, 2024.
- Can Duct Tape Remove Warts? Cleveland Clinic. December 16, 2022.
- Plantar Warts. Cleveland Clinic. April 12, 2023.
- Sharma R. Plantar Wart. Radiopaedia. November 6, 2024.
- Al Abroud AM, Nigam PK. Wart. StatPearls. August 12, 2023.
- Corns and Calluses. Cleveland Clinic. July 25, 2023.

Allison Buttarazzi, MD
Medical Reviewer
Allison Buttarazzi, MD, is board-certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine, and is a certified health and well-being coach. In her primary care practice, Dr. Buttarazzi focuses on lifestyle medicine to help her patients improve their health and longevity, and her passion is helping patients prevent and reverse chronic diseases (like heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes) by improving their lifestyle habits.
She is a graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine and completed a residency at Maine Medical Center. Diagnosed with celiac disease during medical school, she realized the power of improving one's health through diet and lifestyle habits, which she later incorporated into her practice.

Joseph Bennington-Castro
Author
Joseph Bennington-Castro is a science writer based in Hawaii. He has written well over a thousand articles for the general public on a wide range topics, including health, astronomy, archaeology, renewable energy, biomaterials, conservation, history, animal behavior, artificial intelligence, and many others.
In addition to writing for Everyday Health, Bennington-Castro has also written for publications such as Scientific American, National Geographic online, USA Today, Materials Research Society, Wired UK, Men's Journal, Live Science, Space.com, NBC News Mach, NOAA Fisheries, io9.com, and Discover.