How to Sort WordPress Query Results by Multiple Meta Keys

I’m building a website that publishes reviews of hosting companies. For each review I store Price, Rating, and a “Top Pick” flag as post meta. Visitors can sort the review listings by Price, Rating, or Post Date.

The client wants “Top Picks” to always appear first. That means when a user sorts by Price (Low to High), the results should show all Top Picks sorted by price low-to-high first, followed by the remaining reviews sorted by price low-to-high.

In WordPress 4.0, you could pass multiple orderby parameters and specify the order for each, but you were limited to a single meta-based orderby because of the need for a top-level meta_key parameter. For example:

 'be_rating',
	'orderby'  => array(
		'meta_value_num' => 'DESC',
		'post_date'      => 'ASC',
	),
) );

With WordPress 4.2 the query system was improved to allow ordering by multiple meta keys, which makes implementing the “Top Picks first” behavior straightforward. Below is the code I use to build the sort options shown in the screenshot.

 'review',
	'posts_per_page'  => 10,
	'paged'           => get_query_var( 'paged', false ),
	'meta_query'      => array(
		'relation'    => 'AND',
		'be_top_pick' => array(
			'key'     => 'be_top_pick',
			'compare' => 'EXISTS',
		),
		'be_price'    => array(
			'key'     => 'be_price',
			'type'    => 'NUMERIC',
			'compare' => 'EXISTS',
		),
		'be_rating'   => array(
			'key'     => 'be_rating',
			'type'    => 'NUMERIC',
			'compare' => 'EXISTS',
		),
	)
);

// Sort Results
$current_sort = isset( $_GET['hosting-sort'] ) ? esc_attr( $_GET['hosting-sort'] ) : 'most-recent';

switch( $current_sort ) {

	case 'most-recent':
		$args['orderby']  = array(
			'be_top_pick' => 'DESC',
			'post_date'   => 'DESC',
		);
		break;

	case 'price-high':
		$args['orderby'] = array(
			'be_top_pick' => 'DESC',
			'be_price'    => 'DESC',
		);
		break;

	case 'price-low':
		$args['orderby'] = array(
			'be_top_pick' => 'DESC',
			'be_price'    => 'ASC',
		);
		break;

	case 'rating-high':
		$args['orderby'] = array(
			'be_top_pick' => 'DESC',
			'be_rating'   => 'DESC',
		);
		break;

	case 'rating-low':
		$args['orderby'] = array(
			'be_top_pick' => 'DESC',
			'be_rating'   => 'ASC',
		);
		break;
}

$loop = new WP_Query( $args );

How it works

I start by constructing the base query arguments: post type, posts per page, and pagination.
I include a meta_query entry for every meta key used for sorting. Each entry has 'compare' => 'EXISTS' because I want posts that include those meta keys without restricting the query to specific values.
For numeric metadata (Price and Rating) I specify 'type' => 'NUMERIC' so WordPress uses numeric comparison and sorts using meta_value_num instead of meta_value. That prevents lexical ordering when sorting numbers.
In the theme template, a dropdown adds a GET parameter (hosting-sort) to indicate the user’s chosen sort. I read that GET variable and fall back to a default sort of “most recent” if it’s not present.
Depending on the selected sort, I set the orderby argument to an ordered array where be_top_pick is always listed first with a descending order so Top Picks appear first. The second orderby key handles the requested secondary sort (price, rating, or post date).

Notes and best practices

Use the same key names in your meta_query entries as you reference in the orderby array.
Specify numeric types for numerical meta to avoid incorrect ordering of values like “10” vs “2”.
Because WordPress 4.2 allows multiple meta-based orderby clauses, this pattern keeps Top Picks at the top while still honoring the user’s chosen sorting preference for the rest of the results.