10 Best WordPress Cache Plugins in 2025 for Faster Website Speed

Best WordPress Cache Plugins

If you’re running a WordPress website, you know how important it is to have a fast loading website.

A slow website can lead to a poor user experience and can even harm your search engine rankings.

One of the best ways to improve website speed is by using a caching plugin.

A caching plugin helps to store a copy of your website’s pages in the cache, which can be served to visitors instead of generating the page each time it’s requested.

There are many caching plugins available for WordPress, and choosing the right one can be overwhelming.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the best WordPress cache plugins of 2025.

We’ll cover both free and premium options, as well as server-level cache plugins.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a good understanding of the different caching plugins available and which one is the best fit for your website.

Whether you’re a seasoned WordPress user or just getting started, this article will provide you with valuable insights on how to improve your website’s performance.

Why Use a WordPress Cache Plugin?

If you’re running a WordPress site, you know how important it is to have a fast-loading website.

Site speed is crucial for user experience, bounce rate, conversion rates, and search engine rankings.

One of the most effective ways to speed up your site is by using a WordPress cache plugin.

A cache plugin can store a static version of your site’s pages and posts, which can be served to your visitors quickly.

This means that your site doesn’t have to generate a new version of the page every time someone visits it, which can save a lot of server resources.

By using a cache plugin, you can improve your site’s loading times significantly.

This can result in a better user experience, as visitors are more likely to stay on your site if it loads quickly.

A fast-loading site can also help reduce your bounce rate, as visitors are less likely to leave if they don’t have to wait for the site to load.

In addition to improving user experience, a cache plugin can also help improve your search engine rankings.

Google has stated that site speed is a ranking factor, so having a fast-loading site can help improve your SEO.

Finally, using a cache plugin can help save server resources.

By serving a static version of your site’s pages and posts, your server doesn’t have to generate a new version of the page every time someone visits it.

This can help reduce the load on your server, which can be especially important if you’re on a shared hosting plan.

Using a WordPress cache plugin is a great way to improve your site’s speed, user experience, search engine rankings, and server resources.

With so many great cache plugins available, there’s no reason not to use one on your WordPress site.

10 Best WordPress Cache Plugins in 2025

If you’re looking for the best WordPress cache plugins of 2025, you’ve come to the right place.

In this section, we’ll take a look at some of the top caching plugins available for WordPress.

1. WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache is one of the most popular caching plugins for WordPress.

It’s easy to use and offers a range of features, including minification, GZIP compression, and browser caching.

With WP Fastest Cache, you can improve your website’s load times and boost its performance.

2. WP Rocket

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is another popular caching plugin that offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

It’s easy to use and offers features like page caching, cache preloading, and GZIP compression.

With WP Rocket, you can improve your website’s load times and provide a better user experience.

3. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache 4

W3 Total Cache is a powerful caching plugin that offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

It offers page caching, object caching, and database caching, as well as minification and GZIP compression.

With W3 Total Cache, you can improve your website’s load times and reduce server load.

4. Comet Cache

Comet Cache

Comet Cache is a simple and easy-to-use caching plugin that offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

It offers page caching, browser caching, and GZIP compression, as well as the ability to exclude specific pages or posts from caching.

With Comet Cache, you can improve your website’s load times and provide a better user experience.

5. LiteSpeed Cache

LiteSpeed Cache

LiteSpeed Cache is a server-level caching plugin that offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

It offers page caching, browser caching, and GZIP compression, as well as the ability to exclude specific pages or posts from caching.

With LiteSpeed Cache, you can improve your website’s load times and reduce server load.

6. Breeze

Breeze

Breeze is a lightweight caching plugin that offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

It offers page caching, browser caching, and GZIP compression, as well as the ability to exclude specific pages or posts from caching.

With Breeze, you can improve your website’s load times and provide a better user experience.

7. Cache Enabler

Cache Enabler

Cache Enabler is a simple and lightweight caching plugin that offers page caching and GZIP compression.

It’s easy to use and offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

With Cache Enabler, you can improve your website’s load times and provide a better user experience.

8. Autoptimize

Autoptimize

Autoptimize is a powerful caching plugin that offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

It offers minification, GZIP compression, and browser caching, as well as the ability to optimize your website’s CSS and JavaScript files.

With Autoptimize, you can improve your website’s load times and reduce server load.

9. Cachify

Cachify

Cachify is a simple and easy-to-use caching plugin that offers page caching and GZIP compression.

It’s easy to use and offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

With Cachify, you can improve your website’s load times and provide a better user experience.

10. FlyingPress

FlyingPress

FlyingPress is a lightweight caching plugin that offers a range of features to improve your website’s performance.

It offers page caching, browser caching, and GZIP compression, as well as the ability to optimize your website’s images and CSS files.

With FlyingPress, you can improve your website’s load times and provide a better user experience.

In conclusion, there are many great caching plugins available for WordPress.

Whether you’re looking for a simple and lightweight caching plugin or a more powerful caching plugin with advanced features, there’s sure to be a caching plugin that’s right for you.

Features to Consider When Choosing a WordPress Cache Plugin

When choosing a WordPress cache plugin, there are several features you should consider to ensure that you get the best performance for your website.

Caching Methods

The caching method used by the plugin is an important consideration.

Server-side caching is the most effective method and is used by most caching plugins.

However, some plugins also offer client-side caching, which can be useful in certain situations.

Database Optimization

A cache plugin that optimizes your database can help to speed up your site.

This feature removes unnecessary data from your database, reducing the size of your database and making it faster to load.

Image Optimization

Image optimization is another important feature to consider.

A cache plugin that optimizes images can help to reduce the size of your images, making them load faster and improving your page speed.

CDN Support

If you use a CDN (Content Delivery Network), you should choose a cache plugin that supports CDN integration.

This feature can help to reduce the load on your server and improve your page speed.

Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is a feature that delays the loading of images and other media until they are needed.

This can help to reduce the load time of your site and improve your page speed.

Minification

Minification is a process that removes unnecessary characters from your website’s code, reducing its size and improving its load time.

A cache plugin that offers minification can help to improve your page speed.

Gzip Compression

Gzip compression is a feature that compresses your website’s files before they are sent to the browser, reducing their size and improving their load time.

A cache plugin that offers Gzip compression can help to improve your page speed.

Browser Caching

Browser caching is a feature that stores a copy of your website’s files on the user’s browser, reducing the load time of subsequent visits.

A cache plugin that offers browser caching can help to improve your page speed.

Cache Preloading

Cache preloading is a feature that generates a cache of your website’s pages in advance, reducing the load time of subsequent visits.

A cache plugin that offers cache preloading can help to improve your page speed.

Critical CSS

Critical CSS is a feature that loads only the necessary CSS for above-the-fold content, reducing the load time of your site.

A cache plugin that offers critical CSS can help to improve your page speed.

Lazy Load Images

Lazy load images is a feature that delays the loading of images until they are needed, reducing the load time of your site.

A cache plugin that offers lazy load images can help to improve your page speed.

Cache Protection

Cache protection is a feature that protects your cache from being deleted or modified by unauthorized users.

A cache plugin that offers cache protection can help to keep your website’s cache safe.

Documentation

Documentation is an important consideration when choosing a cache plugin.

A plugin with good documentation can help you to understand how to use the plugin effectively and troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

How to Install and Configure a WordPress Cache Plugin

If you have a WordPress blog, it’s important to optimize its performance to ensure a smooth user experience.

One of the most effective ways to do this is by using a cache plugin.

In this section, we’ll discuss how to choose the right hosting provider, install a WordPress cache plugin, and configure it to maximize its benefits.

Choosing the Right Hosting Provider

Before you install a cache plugin, it’s important to ensure that your hosting provider is optimized for WordPress.

A good hosting provider will provide fast loading times, reliable uptime, and the ability to handle high traffic volumes.

When choosing a hosting provider, look for one that offers SSD storage, a content delivery network (CDN), and server-side caching.

These features will help to speed up your website and improve its overall performance.

Installing a WordPress Cache Plugin

Once you have chosen a hosting provider, it’s time to install a WordPress cache plugin.

There are many cache plugins available, both free and paid, and each has its own unique features.

Some of the most popular cache plugins include the ones on our list above.

These plugins are easy to install and configure, and they provide a range of caching options to help optimize your website’s performance.

To install a cache plugin, simply go to the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard and search for your chosen plugin.

Once you have found it, click on Install and then Activate.

Configuring a WordPress Cache Plugin

After you have installed a cache plugin, it’s important to configure it to maximize its benefits.

Most cache plugins have a simple mode that allows you to quickly and easily configure the plugin’s settings.

In the simple mode, you can choose which caching options to enable, such as page caching, browser caching, and object caching.

You can also set the cache expiration time and choose which pages to exclude from caching.

If you are comfortable with more advanced settings, you can switch to the advanced mode and fine-tune the plugin’s settings to optimize your website’s performance.

Performance Testing and Optimization

When it comes to improving your website’s speed and performance, there are a few key steps you can take to ensure your site is running as smoothly as possible.

Measuring Website Speed

Before you can start optimizing your website’s performance, you need to know how fast your site is currently loading.

There are several tools available to help you measure website speed, including Pagespeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTmetrix.

Pagespeed Insights is a free tool from Google that analyzes your website’s performance and provides recommendations for improvement.

Pingdom and GTmetrix are both paid tools that offer more detailed analysis and reporting.

When measuring your website’s speed, it’s important to pay attention to metrics like loading times, site speed, and page load times.

These metrics can help you identify areas where your site may be experiencing slowdowns and help you prioritize your optimization efforts.

Optimizing Website Performance

Once you’ve measured your website’s speed, it’s time to start optimizing your site for better performance.

One key area to focus on is reducing the number of HTTP requests your site is making.

This can be done by minimizing the number of plugins and scripts your site is using and optimizing your images for faster loading.

Another important step is to use a caching plugin to improve your site’s speed.

Caching plugins can help reduce the amount of time it takes for your site to load by caching frequently accessed content and serving it to visitors more quickly.

Finally, it’s important to use Heartbeat Control to manage the frequency of background processes on your site.

This can help reduce server load and improve your site’s overall performance.

Improving Core Web Vitals Scores

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that Google uses to measure the user experience of websites.

The three metrics that make up Core Web Vitals are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

To improve your Core Web Vitals scores, you can focus on optimizing your site for faster loading times, reducing the amount of time it takes for your site to respond to user input, and minimizing layout shifts.

By following these steps, you can improve your website’s speed and performance, which can lead to better user engagement and higher search engine rankings.

FAQs

What Is a WordPress Caching Plugin?

A caching or cache plugin is a tool that helps speed up your WordPress site by storing a copy of your website’s content in a temporary storage area (cache).

When a user visits your site, the cache plugin serves up the stored content, which reduces the amount of time it takes to load your site.

Why Do I Need a Cache Plugin?

A cache plugin can help improve your site’s loading speed, which can have a positive impact on user experience and search engine rankings.

Studies have shown that faster loading sites tend to have lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates.

Are Cache Plugins Easy to Use?

Yes, most cache plugins are designed to be user-friendly and easy to configure.

Many of them offer one-click setup options that allow you to quickly optimize your site’s caching settings.

Are All Cache Plugins the Same?

No, there are different types of cache plugins, and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Some cache plugins are designed to work with specific hosting environments, while others offer more advanced features for power users.

What Are Some Popular Cache Plugins?

Some popular cache plugins include WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, and Comet Cache.

Each of these plugins has its own unique features and benefits, so it’s important to choose one that fits your specific needs.

Can Cache Plugins Slow Down My Site?

While cache plugins are designed to speed up your site, they can sometimes have the opposite effect if not configured correctly.

It’s important to choose a cache plugin that’s compatible with your hosting environment and to configure it properly to avoid any performance issues.

Overall, a cache plugin can be a valuable tool for improving your site’s performance and user experience.

By choosing the right plugin and configuring it correctly, you can help ensure that your site loads quickly and smoothly for all of your visitors.

Conclusion

Choosing the right caching plugin is crucial for ensuring your website’s reliability and improving its performance.

If you’re looking for a community-driven approach, joining a Facebook group dedicated to WordPress caching plugins can help you find the best options for your website.

When it comes to pricing, there are both premium caching plugins and free plugins available.

While premium options offer advanced features, built-in caching options can also be effective for improving your site’s SEO and reducing bounce rates.

No matter which caching plugin you choose, it’s important to regularly monitor your website’s performance and adjust your caching settings as necessary.

By taking the time to optimize your site’s caching, you can ensure that your website is running smoothly and providing a great user experience for your visitors.

Overall, there are many great caching plugins available for WordPress in 2025.

Whether you’re looking for a simple, free option or a premium plugin with advanced features, there is a caching solution that can meet your needs and help improve your website’s performance.

Philip Blomsterberg is a Swedish internet marketer, who has been involved with several online businesses since the mid-nineties. He has worked on a myriad of web projects ranging from eCommerce, domaining and affiliate marketing. Philip worked as a consultant for companies ranked in the Alexa Top 150 and now specializes in SEO.

150 thoughts on “10 Best WordPress Cache Plugins in 2025 for Faster Website Speed

  1. Steve says:

    Interesting results…thanks for laying this out. I’ve always had great luck with WP super cache, especially for mobile but I’m definitely going to try out WP Rocket. It seems like page load times are becoming even more important recently.

  2. Morgan Underwood says:

    Recently I was testing Comet cache and it seemed they are getting better at their caching capabilities. Basically the caching functions might be limited to how much wordpress actually allows to be cached.

  3. sakha says:

    Thanks for so detailed test.
    But it was LiteSpeed Cache would be nice

    1. charles Charles says:

      Yes, agree. Next time we run these tests we’ll include LiteSpeed Cache.

  4. rezus says:

    WOW! Thanks for so detailed test. Best regards from Ukraine to You

  5. Waseem says:

    Using wp fastest cache premium version, it is fast and can be more fast if used with autoptimize, what i like most about this plugin is that their support is fast, it is really fast and they can fix thing by login to your site in case when you need things get fixed.

  6. Roger says:

    Wp-rocket is very good but the bad thing is to have to renew the license each year for plugin support (99 $ each year).

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi Roger, it is true that they are competing with lots of free caching plugins, and for those on a budget one of the free options is a good bet. For businesses though, and maybe professional bloggers, I think $99 is cheap for a year of professional support. And it helps support the ongoing development of a great plugin.

  7. John says:

    Hello,

    please can you test Cachify with the htacces cache config, because I’m sure you have not in this test.

    In german but easy to copy the .htaccess (Apache) config and copying in your htaccess befor doing the test.

    You will be surprised how this free plugins is more better than wp-rocket. And yes Hayden Jame, Cachify is a great cache plugins, free, easy, and do it’s job perfectly.

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi John, we conducted these tests sometime ago now and no longer have the test environment set up so any one-off followup tests wouldn’t be a side by side comparison. Also, our intention with this was to test performance of the plugin “out-of-the-box” with minimal configuration. I believe that Cachify will work very well with the htaccess config, but that is not what we were testing at the time. For most WP users that would be too difficult to implement.

  8. Hayden James says:

    Thanks! All options are here and led me to Cachify which has become my go to cache plugin.

  9. Chris Backhouse says:

    Thank you for a great article.

    I’m running a WooCommerce site on shared hosting and have tried W3 total cache and WP Fastest Cache.

    Based on your recommendations I tried WP Super Cache and got much better results than the others.

    Of particular point to note, is mobile load times were much faster with WP Super Cache. WP Fastest Cache was struggling with some pages, taking 20 secs+. With WP Super Cache load times dropped to around 3secs!!!

    Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi Chris, thanks for sharing your experience. Glad we could help.

  10. Hi.
    Very informative article for bloggers and beginners. I have been using W3TC for like 2 years. But I find it slowing WordPress dashboard. Also when I disabled it, my traffic went down. So that gives the importance of caching.

    My question is:

    Should I use WP-ROCKET or CDN or both for best speeds. ???

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi Palla, yes, using a CDN with WP Rocket will give you the best results.

  11. RICARDO says:

    Great article, thanks for the very valuable info.
    Actually I read many reviews, tried the main cache pluggins and what works for most people didn’t work for me.My opinion is that it depends a lot on each single case, specially the theme being used.

    Anyway, I tried 4 of them, mostly on GTmetrix, and did several tests for each.

    W3 Total Cache: Broke my theme, no matter what settings I had, my theme didn’t work untill I deactivated this pluggin. There’s actually many people with the same issue.

    WP Super Cache: Almost couldn’t see results, very small increase. 86% to 87%. Loading time remained the same.

    WP Fastest cache: Very happy with the results, from 86% to 92% in GTmetrix and around 1.7 seconds to load the page (from 3.4)

    Wordfence, with the Falcon option enabled: Extremelly happy with the results and stopped looking for more options: 93% /and average 0.7 seconds to load.

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi Ricardo, thanks very much for sharing your insights. I agree, it is somewhat dependant on the case in question. We tested on a generic and consistent setup in an effort to get a good baseline comparison, but it is true that different scenarios can deliver different results.

  12. Diego says:

    Amazing test! I love experimental tested results, I feel I can trust these more than anything else. Together with an expert opinion ofc hehe.

    Although some of my sites don’t really have any difference in load speed whenever I install a plugin, or it even slows down. Is this common?

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi Diego, no I don’t think that is common. What plugins have you tried?

  13. Francesco says:

    I personally tested wp-rocket, and did not have any tangible result I was not able to get while using other free resources. (In my case, Siteground Supercacher + Lazy Load free plugin.)

    On top of that I had, (and continue having), heavy problems in order to have my purchase refunded and my email answered.

    After having decided to ask the refund of my purchase, I entered in a nightmare of email exchange that I would have expected only by a really low rated company, receiving a high volume of refund requests. (Which is definitely not a healthy signal).

    I’m definitely not satisfied with both the product and the customer service behind wp-rocket.

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi Francesco, I’m surprised to hear about your bad experience with WP Rocket, they generally get good reviews. I hope you get it resolved soon.

  14. Jasa says:

    I’ve tried super cache and I think it’s good to consider. However, I am still looking for a simple cache plugin that designed for a specific page only. Does anyone know?

  15. Dan says:

    I assume you deactivated WP-Rockets Lazy Image Load and Minification while testing.

    1. charles Charles says:

      We ran all plugins with default settings to test ‘out of the box’ performance.

      1. Dan says:

        Which obscures all your Page Load Time results of WP-Rocket and unfair comparing to others plugins caching functionality.

        1. charles Charles says:

          Dan, we wanted to test the out-of-the box capabilities of the popular caching plugins so non-technical users might have a sense of what these tools can do. If WP-Rocket does more than just caching out-of-the-box and that is reflected in the results then good on them. If you undertake your own testing with some different testing parameters please share the results, that too will be interesting.

  16. Gary Smith says:

    Excellent article and a lot of interesting comments.

    Do people have a view about combining WP Rocked with Wordfence Falcon? Will the two working together further improve my site speed?

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi Gary, Wordfences main features are security oriented and these are great. While Wordfence does also have its own caching system, this will conflict with WP Rocket’s caching system so you’ll need to turn off this feature of Wordfence for the tow plugins to play well together. WP Rocket address this in their FAQs: http://docs.wp-rocket.me/article/126-using-wordfence-with-wp-rocket

  17. Hai Tran says:

    Thanks for great compare, I usually use WP Fastest Cache for all my sites hosted on Apache or Litespeed web server. However, it’s not working on Nginx server or I don’t known how to make it work on Nginx server, then I used Wp Supper Cache on Nginx server

    Those are best solution for me.

    1. Amal says:

      I found a tutorial for making wp fastest cache to work on nginx. It worked for me.

      https://nucuta.com/wp-fastest-cache-configuration-for-nginx/

    2. Hai says:

      If you are hosting on LiteSpeed web server, you can try litespeed cache plugin for wordpress.

  18. Kenth Hagström says:

    Hi!
    As the author of wp-cache.com I must tell you I’m sorry the site has been down and that development has been halted. The website is currently back online, the plugin however is currently not compatible with the latest version of WordPress, usage is not recommended at this time. However, it will be fixed in a near future. I’ll let you know when it’s working again!

    1. Arnold says:

      How’s the compatibility with the latest versions of WP? I’m using it on three blogs right now and everything seems to be working fine.

  19. Gabriel Ravarini says:

    Hello,

    Great and helpful article. Thanks!

    I was wondering what are your thoughts now regarding W3 Total Cache, since the plugin seems to be abandoned.

    There were no updates since 9 months or so and there’s no answers from the authors in their support page.

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hi Gabriel, I have seen the comments around about W3 Total Cache, but the developer has come out recently and said that it is not abandoned as reported on WPTavern.com. Sounds like they’ve had issues but are working on them and plan to continue supporting the plugin.

  20. Chuck says:

    We recently did a comparison between Litespeeds new WordPress cache plugin and WP Super-Cache and the results were pretty amazing. Would love to see you guys add that to your comparison, we would have no problem to set you up with a test account for it.

    Here are the end results, the original blog post can be seen here:
    http://ops.kickassd.com/wp-super-cache-vs-litespeed-wordpress-cache/

    WordPress Caching Nocache VS Litespeed Cache VS WP Super-Cache

    Time Taken To Complete Test (Lower Is Better)

    Time taken for tests: 5.773 seconds (No Caching)

    Time taken for tests: 0.023 seconds (WP Super-Cache)

    Time taken for tests: 0.009 seconds (Litespeed WordPress Cache)

    Requests Per Second (Higher Is Better)

    Requests per second: 8.66 [#/sec] (mean) (No Caching)

    Requests per second: 2131.56 [#/sec] (mean) (WP Super-Cache)

    Requests per second: 5311.24 [#/sec] (mean) (Litespeed WordPress Cache)

    1. charles Charles says:

      Thanks Chuck, Litespeed’s plugin looks great. We can’t easily run this study again for a single plugin, but we do have in mind to re-run it again for all at which point we’ll include any new plugins like Litespeed’s. Cheers.

  21. Odi says:

    Great comparison. I have tried most of this plugins and WP Fastest Cache seems to give me the best result.

  22. Karga says:

    Be very careful about WP Rocket. I’m on shared hosting and I got a mail from Google telling my site was giving 403 errors recently. I identified this was because of the .htaccess file WP Rocket creates. The mod.rewrite section of the code was causing 403 errors. I contacted support and first they said their plugin can’t cause 403 error. Then they accepted their plugin indeed causes 403 error, but they still haven’t released an update. If you’re using this plugin, I highly recommend running a Google Pagespeed test to see if your site is giving 403 error or not.

    1. Jonathan Buttigieg says:

      Hi, thank you for your feedback.

      You are right, WP Rocket writes into the htaccess to put some good performance rules to make your website faster, but of course not to block bots.

      More than 80 000 websites are using WP Rocket, without any issue regarding bots being blocked, and we have very positive feedback about SEO improvements.

      We would be more than happy to help you in our support

  23. Anthony says:

    Great article. One thing to note – W3TC seems to have been abandoned, see https://wordpress.org/support/topic/is-w3-total-cache-dead/

    Having been just about to pull the trigger on a W3TC + Varnish setup, I’m now going with WP Rocket.

    1. charles Charles says:

      Hey thanks Anthony. Yes, that support thread is not a great sign for W3TC. WP Rocket is a good choice I think. They are doing well and seem to be in it for the long haul.

  24. Brian L. says:

    I wanted to write a few positive words about Emre at WP Fastest Cache. If you look at the support that is given from other plugins you will see like I that WP Fastest Cache is not only a great plugin competing to be the best, and it is, but he continues to give great support for his plugin and is always coming out with more tweaks to improve and adapt to the rapid importance of great cache, Google loves speedy. I consider his premium version a great value, I had done lots of research into all premium cache options using this posts as well as many many others. Thanks

  25. Michael says:

    I will give wp-rocket a try. Normally i awoid plugins and do a manually update in htaccess, with thes lines after # END WordPress

    ##EXPIRES CACHING##

    # Enable expirations
    ExpiresActive On
    # Default directive
    ExpiresDefault “access plus 1 month”
    # My favicon
    ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access plus 1 year”
    # Images
    ExpiresByType image/gif “access plus 1 month”
    ExpiresByType image/png “access plus 1 month”
    ExpiresByType image/jpg “access plus 1 month”
    ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access plus 1 month”
    # CSS
    ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”
    # Javascript
    ExpiresByType application/javascript “access 1 month”

    AddType application/x-javascript .js
    AddType text/css .css

    SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:rar|zip)$ no-gzip dont-vary
    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpg|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:avi|mov|mp4)$ no-gzip dont-vary
    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.mp3$ no-gzip dont-vary

    Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

  26. Christian Hansen says:

    Awesome – exactly the in depth analysis/benchmarking on caching plugins I was hoping to find. Thanks a kazillion.

  27. Mehedi says:

    Thank you for your good analysis on WordPress caching plugin. This will definitely help the user to choose the better one. Right now i am using wp super cache and truly it’s running good on my shared hosting.

  28. Joey Blogger says:

    Great review and I would like to add my vote for WP Fastest Cache as a decent option.
    It may not have all the features of some of the others (it does have a paid version which we have but don’t use), but we find it doesn’t interfere with the sites and most things work as they should with a bit of a speed increase – we only use the css and java caching options as we code our own themes and as a result they are pretty quick.
    We also found major issues with some caching software and WPML when doing multilingual sites, so most important is good code, and then a simple caching plugin such as the WPFC.

    1. charles Charles says:

      Thanks for your comment Joey, interesting observations on the issues of caching with WPML. Cheers.

  29. Carson says:

    Your article was really helpful. I appreciate that you only used the standard configuration when testing, but I’ve found the true power of W3TC to be in the advanced options. And just as a side note, WP Rocket is a premium plugin, so should be compared to the premium versions of W3TC and other caching plugins to be fair. I’m really happy to learn about WP Rocket though as I had never heard of it before. I’ll definitely be checking it out! Great post – thank you.

    1. charles Charles says:

      Thanks for your comment Carson. At the time of this study we were not aware of a premium version of W3TC (perhaps it wasn’t available then?). Looking at their website they have a link to information about “premium services” but it doesn’t seem to work so I can’t find out more. Other than WP Superperformance (released after this study) I’m not aware of any other premium caching plugins.

  30. Carplu says:

    Hi, nice test…
    I use wp-rocket and i am very happy with it. but… lately someone who seemed to know a lot about server configs, cdn’s, caching told me that wp-rocket amongst other caching plugins is/are no good solutions safety wise. These plugins would make the wp website more vulnarable… how is your professional look at this?

    1. charles Ed says:

      Hi Carplu, I am not a security expert, but I am not aware of any particular security issues with any of the popular caching plugins (though that doesn’t mean there are none). There was a vulnerability in WP Super Cache reported back in April this year, but I believe that was patched and I would guess that incident prompted the developers of all the popular plugins to assess their own code.

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