10 Best WordPress Caching Plugins Compared in 2024

Best WordPress caching plugins

Saif Hassan August 22, 2022

20 Min Read
12
Category: Reviews

WordPress caching can be complicated if you do not know what you are doing. Trying to explain caching for different complex technologies might take a full chapter. However, you can think of caching as a simple math problem.

What’s five times 2? Anyone can immediately tell you the answer is 10. Why is that? Because at some point in life, one has to memorize the answer. This same thing happens to your WordPress website when you install a caching plugin. Your site “memorizes” some stuff to access those resources faster. This is how caching works on a website.

Caching (pronounced “cashing”) is the process of storing data in a cache. A cache is a temporary storage area.

– Wikipedia

Your website may be visited thousands of times each month. Maybe you attract hundreds, thousands, or millions of traffic each month. If you observe, you can find out that most of the time your website is serving the same or similar content on a daily basis.

Wouldn’t it be great if the server could remember those files to serve up your site every time? That’s what the best WordPress caching plugins do for your site.

Why Do You Need a WordPress Caching Plugin?

Best WordPress caching plugins

Whether you have server-level caching like Litespeed or Varnish, or plugin-level caching with plugins like WP Super Cache or Cache Enabler, you’ll need caching on your website. You might ask what the benefits of caching are.

  • Caching Improves Your Overall User Experience: Since the website loads faster for users, they are now more likely to browse around. Faster sites are preferred by Google and rank higher in search engines. Also, speedier-loading websites are known for decreasing bounce rates as people become frustrated if a page loads for 10 seconds.
  • Fewer Resource Usage Means Faster Loading Time: When your website uses fewer resources, it becomes much faster. Lesser resource usage means a lower strain on your server. This is important when it comes to highly dynamic websites.
  • You May See a Boost in Search Engine Optimization: As we mentioned earlier, since March, Google has been giving higher ranks to those websites that load faster. A fast site + an excellent User Experience always means SEO improvement.
  • WordPress Caching Helps to Load Balance: When you are serving a large amount of traffic daily, you just need a caching plugin to handle that traffic. If your website hits the main web server other than the cache, then your fixed resources will soon run out. Cache helps to serve your content to more concurrent users.

Related: Top WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins for 2024

10 Best WordPress Caching Plugins in 2024

Best WordPress Caching Plugins for your website

There are many WordPress plugins right now which are rocking the WordPress Caching competition. Some of them are a long time in the game, and some of them are a bit newer. Here’s a list of the best WordPress Caching Plugins available right now

Now let’s find the features and usability of each of the above-mentioned WordPress caching plugins.

  1. WP Rocket
  2. Powered Cache
  3. 10Web Booster
  4. WP Super Cache
  5. Comet Cache
  6. Hyper Cache
  7. Cache Enabler
  8. W3 Total Cache
  9. WP Fastest Cache
  10. Litespeed Cache

1. WP Rocket

WP Rocket Caching Plugin

WP Rocket is the all-star hero of WordPress when it comes to website performance. It makes website performance optimization extremely easy, even if you don’t know what you are knowing. The plugin instantly reduces your load time and boosts your Google PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals scores. What’s more, you don’t need any coding skills to use this great plugin.

WP Rocket features are extremely easy to use. The caching features of WP Rocket store your pages by creating static HTML files so that visitors can instantly load them the next time. It also helps enable browser caching, making the browser store the important files in its local cache memory.

There is also a cache preloading feature that makes sure that your visitors have faster and cached versions of your site, without even taking a loading time. WP Rocket automatically creates the cached versions of your content when you activate the plugin.

If you want server-side caching and CDN support, you can use RocketCDN as well, which is WP Rocket’s custom CDN.

Try WP Rocket to Enable Caching One Your Website

2. Powered Cache

10 Best WordPress Caching Plugins Compared in 2024 1

Powered Cache is a relatively newer caching plugin for WordPress that offers great performance optimization for all sorts of websites. It helps websites to achieve higher scores on Google PageSpeed and rank better on search engines.

The plugin combines an easy-to-use interface with great features.

To name a few features, it offers Advanced Page Cache Configuration, Object Caching, Cache Preloading, CDN Integration, Automatic Critical CSS Creation, Automatic Image Optimization, Minify & Combine CSS & JS files, Database Optimization & Scheduled Cleanups and many more important features.

There are also built-in extensions that help to further extend the features of the plugin.

Try Powered Cache To Make Your Site Faster

3. 10Web Booster

10Web Booster - Real Performance Data & Insights

10Web Booster is a great WordPress performance plugin that comes from the popular hosting provider 10Web. It is one of the best plugins on the market right now to speed up WordPress sites, regardless of your hosting provider. The plugin also provides hosting backend optimization if you use 10Web Hosting.

The plugin guarantees a 90+ score on Core Web Vitals with help of the following features –

  • CSS & HTML minification and compression
  • JS minification and compression
  • Image lazyload
  • iFrame and video lazyload
  • Use of critical CSS
  • Image optimization
  • Optimizing font delivery
  • Delay or removal of non-critical third-party JS
  • Converting image format to WebP
  • Container-specific image resizing

It also offers website caching. All these are free for one homepage and 5 inner pages for 10 websites (Free). The premium version offers unlimited page optimization.

Try 10Web Booster To Achieve 90+ Score on PageSpeed

3. WP Super Cache

WP Super cache plugin

WP Super Cache lets you generate static HTML files from a dynamic website. Static files take less time to serve to users. Serving static HTML is a faster alternative to processing WordPress PHP scripts, which can be costly as well as time-consuming.

WP Super Cache has two main methods for serving the cached files. ‘Expert ’, is the fastest method. The expert mode uses mod_rewrite to serve your static files and help to ensure that your site performs well under extreme load from heavy traffic. This is helpful if you are having a lot more traffic and serving hundreds of concurrent users.

Also read: WP Super Cache: Is It the Best WordPress Caching Plugin

The ‘Simple’ method uses PHP to server your cached files, hence isn’t quite as fast. However, if your server does not have Apache’s mod_rewrite module, then you can use this mode.

Since WP Super Cache is lightweight, simple to use, and easy to configure, it’s a good fit for all who do not want to tinker with configurations. WP Super Cache can also sync with your files with a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which can further boost your site’s speed.

Click Here To Check WP Super Cache

4. Comet Cache

Comet Cache

Comet Cache has both free and pro versions. You may want to upgrade to the pro version because of its automation. Comet Cache was previously known as the Quick Cache. The free version of Comet Cache does most of the tasks, but the catch is, you have to complete some of those tasks manually. The client-side browser caching also comes in pretty handy at times.

It is effortless to configure and does its job well. You can set up and get running within minutes. Caching can be accomplished on posts, categories, pages, or tags.

The paid version of Comet Cache provides support for automatic and intelligent cache clearing. So you can forget about the plugin entirely and it will keep doing its work.

Most of the preliminary features you expect from a caching plugin are given away for free. The premium version of the plugin provides the almost same set of features as WP Rocket.

Click Here To Check Comet Cache

5. Hyper Cache

Hyper Cache

Hyper Cache is one of the new plugins that has got a fan following. The basic principle of Hyper Cache is as same as WP Super Cache’s Simple mode of caching.

Hyper Cache is purely PHP and works on every blog: no complex configurations are needed and when you deactivate it no stale settings are left around.

Hyper Cache also plays well with Autoptimize, a plugin we featured on our best WordPress plugins list which magically improves your WordPress website’s loading speed.

If you are looking for an easy PHP Caching other than WP Super Cache, give Hyper Cache a try. Hyper Cache also has a fork named Hyper Cache Extended which promises better performance on low resources.

Let Me Check Everything About Hyper Cache

6. Cache Enabler

Cache Enabler

Cache enabler is a lightweight caching plugin that servers content through static files

Cache Enabler has more than 90,000 users and also has 4.4-star reviews as of writing the article. Other than the usual Caching Features, this is the only plugin that has support for WebP image caching. Apart from these, Cache Enabler also –

  • Supports of 304 Not Modified if the page has not been modified since last cached
  • WebP image format supports (when combined with Optimus)
  • Supports responsive images through srcset from WordPress version 4.4
  • Works perfectly with the optimizer plugin Autoptimize

When combined with Optimus, WordPress Cache Enabler plugin allows you to easily render WebP images. WebP is a new image format that radically shrinks your image size.

Check out WordPress Cache Enabler Documentation to learn in-depth how WebP generation works.

Let Me Check More About Cache Enabler

7. W3 Total Cache

10 Best WordPress Caching Plugins Compared in 2024 2

Under the hood, W3 Total Cache offers robust features to help you improve your website performance and user experience. However, W3 Total Cache is one of the most complex plugins to configure, and if not correctly set according to your web server, you might have worse performance than before.

 If not properly configured according to your web server, you might have worse performance than before. Not recommended if you do not know what you are doing.

Again, Some of the key features of W3 Total Cache include:

  • Supports Minification of JS, CSS, HTML, and Database Requests.
  • Support for importing post attachments directly to a CDN or the WordPress media library.
  • Supports Browser caching via the Cache-Control general-header field.
  • Has support for Caching database objects.
  • CDN support.
  • Can insert code into Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

We should mention that one of the primary strengths of W3 Total Cache is its pre-caching features. You can easily adjust the time at which caching takes place on your site, both on disc and in memory.

Click Here To Explore the W3 Total Cache

8. WP Fastest Cache

WP fastest cache plugin

WP Fastest Cache works the same as most other WordPress caching plugins. It creates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress website. It provides a wide range of features. The premium version provides almost the same set of features as WP Rocket.

Great free version. Works well. Easy to set up.

For those who are looking for a free caching solution that can compete from toe to toe with other premium plugins, WP Fastest Cache can be a great alternative. The dashboard might not be that much pretty, however, it explains each option quite well and is easy to set up.

Explore More About WP Fastest Cache

9. Litespeed Cache

10 Best WordPress Caching Plugins Compared in 2024 3

LiteSpeed Cache is an all-in-one site-quickening plugin, featuring exclusive server-level cache and a compilation of optimization features. However, you must need your website on LiteSpeed Web Server to take full advantage of this plugin.

LiteSpeed Cache is the best plugin if your website is running on a LiteSpeed Server

If you are running your website on LiteSpeed Web Server, then you should use LiteSpeed Cache. It integrates seamlessly with your LiteSpeed Web Server and LSWS’s built-in page cache to dramatically reduce page load times.

With advanced cache-management tools and optimization features, LiteSpeed Cache is an all-in-one site acceleration solution that contains many different modules like image optimization, CSS/JS combining, and HTTP/2 Push.

Get LiteSpeed Cache from WP Hive

FAQ on WordPress Caching Plugins

10 Best WordPress Caching Plugins Compared in 2024 4

Now let’s answer some of your most asked questions in a single place.

  • Does WordPress need a cache plugin?

    A WordPress caching plugin is very important since it can help to significantly improve the speed of your website.

  • Is WP Super Cache free?

    Yes, WP Super Cache is caching plugin from Automattic that is offered for absolutely no cost.

  • Is LiteSpeed Cache free?

    LiteSpeed is free and open-source. However, you can also get their premium version.

  • Does WP Rocket work with LiteSpeed Cache?

    Yes, you can use WP Rocket with LiteSpeed Cache. WP Rocket is a comprehensive performance optimization plugin, whereas LiteSpeed Cache only works to enable caching.

Choose The Best Caching Plugin for Your Site and Customize It Now

WordPress Caching is very important if you are managing a high-traffic website. As we mentioned in our 10 Best Ways to Improve your website speed, you need a great WordPress Caching Plugin to achieve high speed. We covered the best WordPress Caching plugins available now on the market.

Experiment with the plugins and find the one that works best for you. One plugin does not work the best on every server due to different server configurations. You can choose anyone from the list but make sure it complies with your requirements and then customize it as per your needs.

If you want to recommend another caching plugin other than these 7, you can do it by making a comment below. We’d like to know your preferences.

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Saif Hassan

Product Manager by passion & profession. Lead Product Manager at weDevs, former PM @ Poptin. Passionate about writing & tech. He's an advocate of Human-Centered Design and believes that websites and the tools used to build them should be well crafted, intuitive, and accessible. Cyclist. Reader. A WordPress ninja 🥷, HCI expert & a design thinker 💡

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12 replies on “10 Best WordPress Caching Plugins Compared in 2024”

Thank you for including LiteSpeed Cache on your list of best caching plugins!

I noticed that LiteSpeed isn’t included in any of the comparison graphs at the end of the post. Is that because you don’t have a LiteSpeed server to test it on? If so, I just wanted to let you know that there’s a new free license available that could be useful to you in future comparisons.

Also, you mentioned whether the other plugins were free or premium, but you didn’t do the same for LiteSpeed. For the record, the LiteSpeed Cache plugin is 100% free.

Thank you so much, Lisa for your valuable feedback. Yes, you were right. I did not have any LiteSpeed Web Server where I could test your plugins. However, thanks for your link. Soon I will add the comparison of Litespeed in the comparison graphs. Sorry, for the pricing mistake. I promptly updated the info and mentioned that Litespeed Cache is completely free.

I use wp super cache & wp total cache on some of my sites. But wp rocket seems to be the best in terms of speed. It requires less optimization when compared to the other plugins mentioned

I have activated the LiteSpeed cache plugin that run on my website. Currently just purchased WP Rocket plugin, wondering can i use together with LiteSpeed cache plugin? If so, what should i take note of, so as not being interfere with each other?

Thanks!

NO. Don’t do that. The two plugin will conflict with each other. If your server is Litespeed based, then go with Litespeed Cache. Litespeed cache performs like a beast in litespeed server. However, if you are not using Litespeed server, then go with WP Rocket.

Now I’m creating a site and choosing a plugin for caching. Your article helped me a lot and answered many questions. Thank you!

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