Cache plugins

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: 60459

Limit reached: 40 at 5542

Position Plugin Total downloads Active Star Rating Tested up to
17 SiteGround Optimizer 58161245 1000000 4.3 6.2.2
21 WP Super Cache 47496659 2000000 4.3 6.2.2
27 LiteSpeed Cache 44360692 4000000 4.8 6.2.2
28 W3 Total Cache 41672054 1000000 4.4 6.2.2
30 WP Fastest Cache 40605539 1000000 4.9 6.2.2
46 WP-Optimize – Clean Compress Cache 30215791 1000000 4.8 6.2.2
157 Redis Object Cache 6683410 100000 4.6 6.2.2
274 Hummingbird 3558566 100000 4.8 6.1.3
407 Cache Enabler 2221104 100000 4.4 6.2.2
507 Proxy Cache Purge 1695381 60000 4.5 6.0.5
733 Hyper Cache 1067957 10000 4.5 5.8.7
1068 Super Page Cache for Cloudflare 611696 40000 4.9 6.2.2
1263 Comet Cache 477549 40000 4.5 6.0.5
1272 Pantheon Advanced Page Cache 473229 10000 5 6.2.2
1409 Clear Cache For Me 408052 40000 4.8 6.2.2
1864 Clear All Cache for WP Super Cache 261074 10000 3.4 6.1.3
2024 WPBase-Cache 232550 3000 4 5.9.7
2056 DB Cache Reloaded Fix 227303 5000 4.3 3.4.2
2075 SpeedyCache 223908 80000 4.3 6.2.2
2299 Nginx Cache Controller 186655 1000 4.7 6.1.3
2529 WP OPcache 160853 10000 4.8 6.0.5
2605 C3 Cloudfront Cache Controller 152281 3000 4.3 6.1.3
2630 WP REST Cache 149779 10000 4.8 6.1.3
2693 SNS Count Cache 144491 10000 4 5.2.18
2734 Nginx Cache 140492 10000 4.5 5.6.11
2879 Memcached 128091 30 3.7 6.1.3
2942 Simple Cache 122816 4000 4.2 5.8.7
3294 Autoclear Autoptimize Cache 102824 20000 5 5.8.7
3324 Batcache Manager 101611 1000 4.5 5.3.15
3511 Aruba HiSpeed Cache 92658 70000 5 6.2.2
3658 Docket Cache 86334 8000 5 6.2.2
3743 cos-html-cache 82882 1000 0
4001 Hyper Cache Extended 75114 700 4.9 4.9.23
4072 ezCache 73187 10000 4.6 6.2.2
4086 Cache-Control 72782 3000 5 5.2.18
4152 Seraphinite Accelerator (Base cache only) 71087 7000 4.9 6.2.2
4919 Powered Cache 53359 2000 4.7 6.2.2
4953 MO Cache 52743 3000 5 3.4.2
5462 Cache Images 44649 2000 5 6.0.5
5542 WP File Cache 43721 1000 3.5 3.1.4
40 TOTALS 282792168

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
Cache plugins functionality comparison

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?