After running nine separate performance tests for each caching plugin, we have a three-way tie for first place with the following plugins:
- WP Rocket
- WP Super Cache
- WP-Optimize
Of those three plugins…
- WP Rocket only comes in a premium version.
- WP Super Cache is 100% free at WordPress.org.
- WP-Optimize uses a freemium model (though we only tested the free version at WordPress.org).
So – which one should you choose? That depends on your features and needs…
If you’re on a budget and want something simple, you definitely won’t go wrong with WP Super Cache or WP-Optimize.
If you’re willing to pay, WP Rocket is a great option. While the data shows that you don’t need to pay, some of the advantages of WP Rocket are that:
- You get access to premium support to help you set up the plugin, which is nice to have if you’re not an advanced user.
- It does a lot more than caching. While we didn’t enable all of these settings to keep things fair and standardized, you can go further than we did in our comparison and eke out some extra performance.
- It still works with popular hosts that ban other caching plugins, such as Kinsta, WP Engine, etc.
Additionally, while these three plugins performed the best in our test, other options like WP Fastest Cache and Cache Enabler were not far behind, so you certainly won’t go wrong if you like one of those plugins’ feature sets.