Is your website running slow, and underperforming in the search engine ranking pages (SERPs)? A reason for that is the lack of optimization plugins, or using improper ones. We have analyzed over 100 different page speed optimization plugins for WordPress and listed the top 8, which could achieve you 90+ scores on Page Speed Insights, and other page speed testing tools.
The best WordPress speed optimization plugins are LiteSpeed Cache, WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, Seraphite Accelerator, and Perfmatters.
Best WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins in 2024
There are many reasons for slow WordPress websites. Some of them are caused by slow hosting providers, and others by installing too many WP plugins. However, the biggest reason for bad WordPress loading times is the lack of speed optimization plugins configured, or technical knowledge to speed up your WordPress website.
LiteSpeed Cache
LiteSpeed Cache is by far the fastest page speed optimization plugin for WordPress websites. While it requires manual toggling, it comes with various optimization settings. The LS Cache plugin serves as server-level caching, which surpasses PHP-level caching and aims to free your website from heavy-lifting tasks.
The plugin comes with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript optimization settings, such as minifying, combining, deferring, and much more. Users can choose how scripts and styles are loaded, including extracting the unused CSS and loading the critical assets before other page content.
LiteSpeed Cache users don’t need to rely on image optimization plugins, since imagery optimizations are already included, and could improve your image response times.
Nonetheless, LS Cache offers a seamless CDN integratio with QUICCloud and Cloudflare.
To use LiteSpeed Cache, users are required to use a LiteSpeed server or purchase a LiteSpeed license for WordPress. For non-WordPress sites, an OpenLite Speed license is required for the LS Cache plugin to function properly.
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the second most used WordPress optimization plugin, that could increase page load time without having technical knowledge. For the price of $59/year per site, users can easily improve their site speed, and apply advanced caching techniques.
Just like the LiteSpeed cache, WP Rocket does not require the use of image optimization plugins but will require manually resizing your image dimensions.
The plugin comes with easy-to-understand optimization settings, grouped in categories. For e-commerce site users, WP Rocket has included special exclusion features, which prevent caching dynamic URLs.
Another advantage of using WP Rocket over competitors is the freedom of choosing any WordPress host and achieving great speeds, by just activating the plugin.
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is one of the greatest WordPress performance plugins for users who have technical knowledge. Just like WP Rocket, it doesn’t require the use of special servers and can be activated on shared VPS, or dedicated servers.
It comes with an easy-to-use setup guide, which helps you choose the best performance settings, and use your server’s resources for an efficient caching procedure.
While the plugin can help you achieve great scores, it requires in-depth knowledge, or your website may appear broken. Yet, if you prefer using W3 Total Cache over other caching plugins, you can purchase the W3TC plugin configuration for $125.
For more in-depth optimization, and removing scripts with the free W3 Total Cache plugin, users can download Asset Page CleanUp. It lets users choose what scripts to remove from the website and load their preferred ones with priority.
Seraphite Accelerator
Seraphite Accelerator is a rapidly growing website speed optimization plugin, which could be a close competitor to LiteSpeed cache. Seraphite Accelerator is a beginner-friendly solution, that lets users easily minify, inline, and combine JavaScript, HTML, and CSS files within a single click.
It also helps with deferring scripts and loading critical assets to ensure compatibility upon loading the website. Seraphite Accelerator is a very new, but promising plugin for WordPress sites, handled by non-technical people.
The plugin comes with an option to lazy load images, file compressions, cache, and even defer.
Seraphite Accelerator comes with a free plan, which lets users receive full optimization features until they reach 5000 page views for the month. In the next month, the page views are reset, and users can continue using the plugin’s free version.
Perfmatters
Perfmatters is a highly appreciated plugin that can speed up your WordPress website. Perfmatters was developed by Kinsta with the idea of providing WordPress hosting with great results. It uses new technology, and creates caching on a server level, to minimize the load on your website.
More than that, Perfmatters has great features that are perfect for optimizing Woocommerce stores and changing the behavior of your WordPress website. The main idea of Perfmatters is to minimize unused scripts and gain complete control over any WP installation.
The Perfmatters WordPress plugin can be used on any hosting but is recommended to exist in conjunction with Kinsta. Even the smallest Kinsta plans.
FlyingPress
FlyingPress is a close competitor to WP Rocket in terms of simplicity and great features. The only difference is that FlyingPress comes at a much cheaper price, and gets discounted every other year. As one of the best optimization plugins for lower-budget users, Kinsta offers entirely different features, such as database, and bloat optimization settings,
FlyingPress also offers its own CDN solution, which costs only $5 per month and can handle heavy loads. While many optimization plugins require purchasing a foreign CDN, FlyingPress tries to provide an all-in-one solution for a smaller price.
In terms of speed, FlyingPress has shown impressive results. It does not require any extensive knowledge of Htaccess script writing, or 3rd party software to achieve great results.
Asset CleanUp
Asset Cleanup is another great page speed optimization plugin for WordPress websites. It offers complex solutions to combine, minify, inline, and optimize your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS files. Nonetheless, you can also choose where these files will be loaded and set a loading order.
With Asset CleanUP, users can easily reduce the number of HTTP requests, and swiftly increase their page speed, by just tweaking a few options from the many categories. The best part is that these features don’t require extensive knowledge in the field.
On top of that, Asset Cleanup offers the option to remove query strings, and useless comments created by WordPress. Users can easily strip information about their WordPress installation, and WP version, and even strip XML data.
For advanced users, the free version of Asset CleanUp offers script unloading rules. You can choose amongst any JavaScript or CSS styles, and unload them completely from your website. These rules can be set per one page, or be unloaded from the entire website. If a plugin script is required to be used on a single page, Asset Cleanup offers unloading exclusions on a page basis.
Asset CleanUp can also be used in conjunction with other page optimization plugins if its caching solutions are not helpful for your website.
Page Speed Optimization Plugins Alternatives
a3 Lazy Load
a3 Lazy Load is a great plugin for lazy loading specific sections of your website, which users haven’t scrown onto. It’s a very efficient plugin, which can unload the scripts of your images, videos, iframes, and other elements, which aren’t visible to the user’s viewport.
The content will remain invisible and unloaded from the website until a visitor scrolls on it. Once starts scrolling down, the content is called, and the scripts are loaded in a fast manner.
These optimizations aim to provide a better user experience and reduce the number of HTTP calls. We have seen a3 Lazy Load having a huge impact on page load times by just enabling it with WP Rocket.
Plugin Organizer
Plugin Organizer is a very good alternative to Asset Cleanup, as it’s packed with lesser, but more efficient features. With Plugin Organizer, users can easily manage when plugins will be loaded, and which pages should unload their scripts. It’s a per-page plugin, which can optimize pages in bulk, or manually for single pages.
With Plugin Organizer users don’t have to worry about installing another heavy plugin, as it does not add many HTTP requests, or require more calls than its alternatives.
NitroPack
NitroPack is one of Google’s most favorable optimization plugins for WordPress. It comes with a free plan, that handles most of the optimizations for users. NitroPack offers great features, despite the free plan, but on the downside, they will display a banner with their logo.
While it may not be the perfect option for many, upgrading comes at a very expensive, but worth your time price. The features of their cheapest plan start at approximately $21 per month, which includes bandwidth for the Cloudflare global CDN.
ShortPixel
ShortPixel is the best image optimization plugin for WordPress, which also shares the cheapest prices for its features. If you want to bulk-optimize images and convert them to WebP format, ShortPixel can help you go even further. Their image optimizer strips the unnecessary image data, leaving your images lightweight.
For plugins that don’t handle image optimization, ShortPixel can help you with their smart compression, and lossy features, which reduce image quality, but increase their speed.
On top of that, if you wish to upgrade to the ShortPixel pro plan, the cost starts at $9,99 per month and includes unlimited resources to their global CDN.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is the global, and most used free CDN network. It powers millions of sites, especially, WordPress ones. Cloudflare became so popular, that they developed their own plugin for WordPress, which can be seamlessly integrated with your WordPress installation.
The Cloudflare plugin is the perfect solution if you want to have a single dashboard and control everything from there. The plugin requires a manual installation and integration with Cloudflare. After everything has been configured, you can easily manage your page, image, and other caching directly from your dashboard.
Page Optimizer Pro
Page Optimizer PRO (POP) is another newly designed, but very strong page-optimizing plugin for WordPress websites. It has been created by Kyle Roof and has been a solid solution for both technical and on-page SEO optimization.
Compared to other caching plugins, Page Optimizer PRO offers a watchdog that will monitor any website, and provide beginner-friendly reports. These reports aim to provide users with valuable data, which includes EEAT and NLP information to optimize your website on a per-page basis.
Copywriting teams can also take a better look at the Page Optimizer Pro AI writing assistant, which helps reduce writing time costs and rank higher.