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Best WordPress Plugins for Making Sites Fast with SEO

15 plugins compared · Updated September 2026 · Performance & Speed

Choosing a WordPress plugin for making sites fast comes down to a few things: whether it is still actively maintained, whether real users rate it well, and whether it does the specific job you need without dragging the rest of the site down.

We ranked 15 plugins using our WPScore, which weighs the user rating (adjusted for how many people actually rated it), how many sites run it, how recently it was updated, and which WordPress version it is tested against. 15 of them have enough public data to be scored; the rest are listed below the ranked block, clearly marked, rather than being given a number we cannot justify.

How this list is funded. Some links here earn us a commission if you buy. It costs you nothing extra, and it does not move anything up the list — the order comes from the WPScore, which is calculated from public ratings, install counts and update history. See the method.

At a glance

  1. 1. LiteSpeed Cache Best overall 94/100
  2. 2. W3 Total Cache 91/100
  3. 3. Super Page Cache 91/100
  4. 4. SpeedyCache 89/100
  5. 5. reSmush.it 86/100
  6. 6. Clearfy Cache 86/100
  7. 7. CrawlWP SEO 86/100
  8. 8. Lightweight Accordion 86/100
  9. 9. Internal Links Manager 85/100
  10. 10. AF Companion 85/100
  11. 11. All 404 Redirect to Homepage 84/100
  12. 12. Nexter Extension 84/100
  13. 13. QuickWebP 84/100
  14. 14. WPSpeed 83/100
  15. 15. Cloudflare 82/100
1 LiteSpeed Cache
Best overall Free by LiteSpeed Technologies

LiteSpeed Cache

All-in-one unbeatable acceleration & PageSpeed improvement: caching, image/CSS/JS optimization...

4.8★
from 2,764 ratings
7M+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.4
94

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
2 W3 Total Cache
Free by BoldGrid

W3 Total Cache

Search Engine (SEO) & Performance Optimization (WPO) via caching. Integrated caching: CDN, Page, Minify, Object, Fragment, Database support.

4.4★
from 5,420 ratings
900k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.1
91

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
3 Super Page Cache
Free by Optimole

Super Page Cache

Boost PageSpeed, SEO, and Core Web Vitals with full page caching, JS/CSS optimization, media optimization, and Cloudflare CDN.

4.8★
from 506 ratings
70k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.1
91

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
4 SpeedyCache
Free by Softaculous

SpeedyCache

SpeedyCache is a WordPress cache plugin that helps you improve performance of your WordPress site by caching, minifying, and compressing your website.

4.4★
from 30 ratings
600k+
active installs
Updated
Jun 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.4
89

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
5 reSmush.it
Free by ShortPixel

reSmush.it

reSmush.it is the FREE image compressor and optimizer plugin - use it to optimize your images and improve the SEO and performance of your website.

4.3★
from 165 ratings
100k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.1
86

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
6 Clearfy Cache
Free by Creativemotion

Clearfy Cache

Optimize and tweak WordPress by disable unused features. Improve performance, SEO and security using Clearfy — super easy, fast and zero code.

4.7★
from 339 ratings
50k+
active installs
Updated
Jul 2026
Tested to
WP 6.9.7
86

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
7 CrawlWP SEO
Free by properfraction

CrawlWP SEO

Improve your WordPress SEO with instant search-engine indexing, SEO insights, and indexing status tracking.

4.7★
from 60 ratings
30k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.1
86

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
8 Lightweight Accordion
Free by Andy Feliciotti

Lightweight Accordion

Simple accordion for adding collapse elements to pages without affecting page load time. Includes Gutenberg block and shortcode for classic editor.

5★
from 60 ratings
10k+
active installs
Updated
Jul 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.4
86

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
9 Internal Links Manager
Free by webraketen

Internal Links Manager

Automated internal linking made easy. Optimize your SEO performance, strengthen your link juice, and improve user experience automatically.

4.8★
from 33 ratings
10k+
active installs
Updated
Jul 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.4
85

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
10 AF Companion
Free by AF themes

AF Companion

One-Click Starter Sites, Performance Optimization, and Publisher Growth Tools

4.9★
from 34 ratings
10k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.1
85

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
11 All 404 Redirect to Homepage
Free by wp-buy

All 404 Redirect to Homepage

Using this plugin, you can fix all 404 error links by redirecting them to homepage using the SEO 301 redirection. Improve your SEO rank & pages speed

4.1★
from 96 ratings
200k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 6.9.7
84

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
12 Nexter Extension
Free by POSIMYTH

Nexter Extension

Replace 50+ WordPress Plugins: Free SEO, Theme Builder, Code Snippets, Image Optimizer (WebP/AVIF), SMTP Email, Security, Performance & More

4.7★
from 13 ratings
10k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.4
84

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
13 QuickWebP
Free by Ludwig You

QuickWebP

QuickWebP converts JPG and PNG to WebP, compresses images locally, improves image SEO, and adds AVIF with QuickWebP Pro.

4.7★
from 19 ratings
8k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.1
84

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
14 WPSpeed
Free by JExtensions Store

WPSpeed

WordPress speed optimization plugin to boost PageSpeed, improve Core Web Vitals, reduce TTFB and enable static HTML caching for 100/100 performance.

4.9★
from 39 ratings
2k+
active installs
Updated
Aug 2026
Tested to
WP 7.1
83

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org
15 Cloudflare
Free by Cloudflare

Cloudflare

All of Cloudflare’s performance and security benefits in a simple one-click install.

3.5★
from 180 ratings
200k+
active installs
Updated
Jul 2026
Tested to
WP 7.0.4
82

WPScore

Read review View on WordPress.org