Table of the top 40 WordPress plugins associated with caching, as measured by total downloads and a comparison of the top 5’s capabilities.
Total plugins: 60113
Limit reached: 40 at 5440
| Position | Plugin | Total downloads | Active | Star Rating | Tested up to |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | SiteGround Optimizer | 54430391 | 1000000 | 4.3 | 6.1.1 |
| 19 | WP Super Cache | 45302206 | 2000000 | 4.3 | 6.1.1 |
| 27 | LiteSpeed Cache | 39589819 | 3000000 | 4.8 | 6.1.1 |
| 28 | W3 Total Cache | 39095025 | 1000000 | 4.4 | 6.1.1 |
| 31 | WP Fastest Cache | 37373208 | 1000000 | 4.9 | 6.1.1 |
| 46 | WP-Optimize – Clean Compress Cache | 27241081 | 1000000 | 4.8 | 6.1.1 |
| 181 | Redis Object Cache | 5138270 | 100000 | 4.7 | 6.1.1 |
| 282 | Hummingbird | 3246451 | 100000 | 4.8 | 6.1.1 |
| 392 | Cache Enabler | 2162968 | 100000 | 4.4 | 6.1.1 |
| 486 | Proxy Cache Purge | 1667972 | 60000 | 4.4 | 6.0.3 |
| 705 | Hyper Cache | 1065548 | 10000 | 4.5 | 5.8.6 |
| 1105 | Super Page Cache for Cloudflare | 545543 | 40000 | 4.9 | 6.1.1 |
| 1221 | Comet Cache | 472848 | 40000 | 4.5 | 6.0.3 |
| 1323 | Pantheon Advanced Page Cache | 413788 | 10000 | 5 | 6.1.1 |
| 1430 | Clear Cache For Me | 373412 | 40000 | 4.8 | 6.0.3 |
| 1815 | Clear All Cache for WP Super Cache | 259060 | 10000 | 3.4 | 6.1.1 |
| 2010 | DB Cache Reloaded Fix | 227046 | 6000 | 4.3 | 3.4.2 |
| 2250 | WPBase-Cache | 185852 | 3000 | 4 | 5.9.5 |
| 2291 | Nginx Cache Controller | 180639 | 1000 | 4.7 | 6.1.1 |
| 2623 | WP OPcache | 145190 | 10000 | 4.8 | 6.0.3 |
| 2633 | SNS Count Cache | 143814 | 10000 | 4 | 5.2.17 |
| 2635 | C3 Cloudfront Cache Controller | 143664 | 3000 | 4.3 | 6.1.1 |
| 2777 | Nginx Cache | 131123 | 10000 | 4.5 | 5.6.10 |
| 2780 | WP REST Cache | 130666 | 10000 | 4.8 | 6.0.3 |
| 2886 | Simple Cache | 121604 | 4000 | 4.2 | 5.8.6 |
| 3014 | Memcached | 112848 | 20 | 4 | 6.1.1 |
| 3263 | Batcache Manager | 99586 | 1000 | 4.5 | 5.3.14 |
| 3264 | Autoclear Autoptimize Cache | 99531 | 20000 | 5 | 5.8.6 |
| 3657 | cos-html-cache | 82682 | 1000 | 0 | |
| 3895 | Hyper Cache Extended | 74845 | 800 | 4.9 | 4.9.22 |
| 4087 | Cache-Control | 69788 | 3000 | 5 | 5.2.17 |
| 4286 | Docket Cache | 64316 | 3000 | 5 | 6.1.1 |
| 4290 | ezCache | 64270 | 10000 | 4.6 | 6.1.1 |
| 4397 | Aruba HiSpeed Cache | 61995 | 60000 | 5 | 6.1.1 |
| 4881 | MO Cache | 52126 | 3000 | 5 | 3.4.2 |
| 4960 | Seraphinite Accelerator (Base cache only) | 50612 | 5000 | 4.8 | 6.1.1 |
| 5349 | WP Fast Cache | 44955 | 1000 | 4.5 | 3.5.2 |
| 5431 | Powered Cache | 43736 | 2000 | 4.8 | 6.1.1 |
| 5432 | Cache Images | 43732 | 2000 | 5 | 6.0.3 |
| 5440 | WP File Cache | 43611 | 1000 | 3.5 | 3.1.4 |
| 40 | TOTALS | 260795821 |
Top 5 cache plugins compared
The table below compares the top 5 caching plugins against some of the more popular functional requirements for caching. Some explanations of the results are also provided.
| Functionality | SiteGround Optimizer | WP Super CACHE | W3 TOTAl CACHE | LiteSpeed cache | WP Fastest CACHE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dynamic | Y | ? | . | Y | . |
| File based | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Memcache | SG | . | Y | Y | Y |
| Logged in | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Clearing granularity | ? | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Exclude | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Preload | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Hooks/APIs | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Heartbeat | Y | N | N | Y | N |
| CSS | Y | . | Y | Y | £ |
| JS | Y | . | Y | Y | £ |
| HTML | Y | . | Y | Y | £ |
| Web fonts | Y | . | . | Y | £ |
| Image compression | SG | . | . | Y | £ |
| Lazy load | Y | . | ? | Y | . |
| Speed test | Y | N | Y | Y | N |
| WP-CLI | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Export/import | Y | N | Y | Y | Y |
| WPMS | Y | . | . | Y | Y |
| CDN | SG | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Cookies | Y | Y | Y | . | . |
| Windows Subdir | Y | ? | ? | Y | |
| GitHub? | N | Y | Y | Y | N |
Legend
- Y – the plugin supports this
- ? – I couldn’t find out how to get it to work
- N – Not supported
- . or blank – I don’t know.
- £ – Only in the Premium version
- SG – Only when hosted on SiteGround
Dynamic Caching
Store your content in the server’s memory for a faster access with full-page caching solution powered by NGINX. Having Dynamic Cache is essential for speeding up your website.
SiteGround’s definition of Dynamic caching
- SiteGround’s dynamic caching using NGINX is difficult to turn off. Its functionality trumps other cache plugins.
- WPSC supports Expert caching which serves the cached pages directly from Apache.
- W3TC supports reverse proxy caching via varnish.
File based
Does the plugin support file based caching where the cached file is served from a caching directory?
Memcache
Does the plugin support some level of memcached caching.
Logged in
Does the plugin support caching/not caching for logged in users?
Clearing granularity
Can you clear the cache for a particular post / page?
Exclude
Can you exclude URLs from being cached? Most plugins provide an admin interface and a filter to enable this.
- W3TC provides a filter that may support this.
Preload
Does the plugin preload the cache when cleared?
Hooks/APIs
Does the plugin provide hooks and/or APIs allowing programmatical interaction with the cache?