Top 8 WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins – Free and Paid

You have probably heard about the importance of speed on websites. But what exactly does it mean? And how do you optimize your website for speed?

The speed of a website depends on many factors, including running on a good server and most importantly, choosing a plugin with performance features such as caching and CSS/JS optimization.

And for today’s standard, Speed isn’t the only factor for SEO algorithms, with the introduction by Google of the Core Web Vitals. Page Experience becomes as much as important as having a website loading fast.

Take a look below for a list of top plugins to improve your website Pagespeed which is Google’s speed test tool and also fix your Core Web Vitals, the new Page Experience algorithm from Google. Many of these plugins can be used together to maximize results(check compatibility).

Perfmatters

Perfmatters may be discouraging to use due to its advanced features, but its interface lets beginners remove unnecessary code from running to improve Pagespeed and Core Web Vitals.

Perfmatters “Script Manager” lists all your scripts and allows you to remove them from loading by device type, location, group of users, or using a regex formula.

You can access Perfmatters documentation to make sure what effect each feature will have, and how to fix any issues, if encountered. Perfmatters also offers a “Testing Mode”, which safely previews features before applying them to the live website.

One of the features of Perfmatters is database optimization, offering scheduled automatic database optimization. Perfmatters also have many features focused on Woocommerce. Other Perfmatters features:

• Change your WordPress login URL: change the wp-login URL to avoid hacking or bots.
• Google Analytics locally: speed up your site by reducing extra third-party requests.
• Add code to header, body, and footer.
• Preloading: Preload images only necessary, improving Core Web Vitals.
• Defer and delay JavaScript.
• Remove unused CSS: creates a different CSS file with removed unused CSS.
• Google Fonts locally: speed up your site by reducing extra third-party requests.
• Multisite support.
• CDN rewrite.

You may fix your Core Web Vitals and Pagespeed using only Perfmatters even for themes like Elementor, if you’re keen to test your page functions and visuals.

Perfmatters 20% OFF Coupon: WPALPHA

Wp Rocket

Leader in the cache performance, it has many new features released to help improve Core Web Vitals, including removing unused CSS and delaying all Javascript but not essential ones by default:

• Delay Javascript until user interaction
• Critical CSS
• Cloudflare integration
• Database Optimization
• HTML/CSS/JS minification & compression
• DNS prefetching, preloading
• Remove unused CSS
• Lazyload
• CDN: Bunny
• For Image Optimization + WebP, consider Imagify $10/month

The yearly pricing on Wp Rocket plans are:

• WP Rocket 1 website license: $59
• WP Rocket 3 websites license: $119
• WP Rocket Unlimited website license: $299

Cloudflare Automatic Platform Optimization

Cloudflare currently offers Automatic Platform Optimizations (APO) for $5/month, and it caches the HTML of your WordPress website. This is possible due to Cloudflare Workers that cache dynamic content.

According to Cloudflare, their Automatic Platform Optimization plugin optimized their client’s Web Vitals and Core Web Vitals metrics:

“Automatic Platform Optimization consistently demonstrated better aggregate performance among sites we analyzed in TTFB, First Paint, FCP, and LCP metrics. Even more impressive are improvements on both desktop and phone form factors.”

• TTFB (Time to First Byte): Improvements of 72%
• FCP (First Contentful Paint): Improvements of 23%
• Speed Index: Improvements of 13%

Cloudflare APO is compatible with WP Rocket* and many other plugins, check the compatibility here.

*Cloudflare APO cache needs to be manually purged on every Wp Rocket change.

Nitropack

Nitropack is currently the preferred solution to improve Wordpress Pagespeed websites. According to Nitropack, it now powers more than 91.000 websites.

Nitropack has optimization levels that help non-developers to speed up their website and have their Pagespeed score improved instantly, across all pages. One of the downsides of that may be the downgrade resulted in delaying essential files, resulting in Core Web Vitals issues.

Its main features are:

• Delay JS until user-interaction
• CDN
• Critical CSS
• Cloudflare integration
• Lazyload + Image Optimization + WebP
• HTML/CSS/JS minification & compression
• DNS prefetching, preloading
• Remove unused CSS (Reduce Unused CSS)

The pricing in 1 year on Nitropack would be as follows:

• Nitropack 50.000 pageviews/mo limit(25GB max bandwidth): $199/year*
• Nitropack 200.000 pageviews/mo limit(100GB max bandwidth): $485/year*
• Nitropack 1.000.000 pageviews/mo limit(500GB max bandwidth): $1672/year*

5% OFF Nitropack Coupon: WPALPHA

Asset Cleanup

Asset Cleanup is a free plugin with a paid version that aims to help remove unused css and js from your WordPress.

Asset Cleanup Pro has additional features for advanced users whiling to fine-tune their site with specific rules for removing unused CSS and JS.

It offers the removal of CSS/JS everywhere(all pages of the website), and the removal of a specific post type, with both options able to add exceptions(where you want to keep loading it). Asset Cleanup offers a note box where you can write down why you removed that asset from loading.

Asset Cleanup Pro 1-year prices:

• Asset Cleanup Pro 1 Site License: $49
• Asset Cleanup Pro 3 Sites License: $79
• Asset Cleanup Pro Unlimited Sites License: $149

Jetpack Boost

Jetpack Boost can complement websites that use the hosting proprietary speed optimization plugins or compatible performance plugins with no overlapping features.

It’s currently the only plugin offering a free critical css feature. It also provides lazyload and defers non-essential Javascript(both features might overlap with other plugin features).

Jetpack Boost is offered freely by Jetpack, with no need to have a wordpress.com linked account.

Flyingpress

Flyingpress is a caching plugin, developed by the creator of the Flying Script plugin, and website wpspeedmatters.com. 

Flyingpress main difference from other caching plugins may be their newly released features such as Prioritize Resources that directly improve the LCP(largest contentful paint) Core Web Vitals. LCP is one metric where WordPress falls apart from other technologies.

FlyingPress also offers another tool to optimize LCP, such as lazyload, with the option to exclude in the interface above-the-fold images. Most lazyload plugins improperly lazyload above-the-fold images, compromising the LCP metric.

Another newly and powerful released feature is Cloudflare APO compatibility. Competitors may lack this feature.

FlyingPress has also all the features of caching-performance plugins such as Remove Unused CSS, Delay JS or Defer, and Database Optimization. Other main features:

• Critical CSS
• Minify
• Optimize Google Fonts: Self-host, combine and preload Google Fonts.
• Reduce CLS feature: Add missing width and height attributes to images.

FlyingPress recently fixed a broken access control vulnerability in its plugin.

FlyingPress offers a CDN addon powered by BunnyCDN starting at $3/month for 100GB/bandwidth usage.

Wp Optimize

Wp Optimize is a plugin alternative to free cache plugins, and also a strong competitor for paid WordPress performance and cache plugins.

On the free version, Wp Optimize offers unique features that directly improve the Pagespeed such as loading css asynchronously and better Google fonts/Font Awesome loading, alongside so popular as CSS/JS minification, combination, and others.

It also offers Mobile-specific cache, Database Optimization, and Image Optimization which are features most seen on paid cache/performance plugins, on the free version.

Wp Optimize Premium main features:

• Run CSS Asynchronously
• Lazyload
• Cloudflare integration
• Database Optimization
• Image Optimization
• CDN Integration (Partial)
• For Delay JS until user interaction, use Flying Scripts
• For Critical CSS, use Jetpack Boost

Some remaining features of Wp Optimize Premium are Multisite support, Multilingual and multi-currency compatible caching, Geolocation, and tax country for WooCommerce stores.

The pricing (1-year) on Wp Optimize would be as follows:

• Wp Optimize Premium 1 website license, 1-year plan: $49
• Wp Optimize: Free

Autoptimize

Autoptimize is a free plugin offering a range of optimization features including basic and advanced features:

• Minify Javascript and CSS.
• Compress and Combine Javascript and CSS.
• Cache.
• Preload and preconnect.
• Lazyload
• HTML/CSS/JS minification & compression
• DNS prefetching, preloading