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LazyLoad Plugin
The best free lazy load plugin for WordPress. Lazy load images, videos, and iframes to improve performance and Core Web Vitals scores.
The facts
- Rating
- 4.2★ from 139
- Active installs
- 100k+
- Price
- Free
- Last updated
- 17 Oct 2025
- Added
- Jan 2014
- Requires WP
- 4.9
- Tested up to
- WP 6.8.8
- Requires PHP
- 7.3
- Downloads
- 1,772,946
Our analysis
AI-assistedLazyLoad Plugin is a WordPress plugin designed to lazy load images, videos, and iframes, displaying them only when they are visible to users. This technique helps to speed up your website by reducing loading times and optimising performance metrics like Google PageSpeed scores.
The plugin does not rely on JavaScript libraries such as jQuery and has a lightweight script size of less than 10KB. It is suitable for those looking to enhance their site's performance without the overhead of additional scripts.
Best for: This plugin suits WordPress users seeking to improve site speed and performance.
What it does well
- ✓Free to use from the WordPress.org directory
- ✓No JavaScript library required, keeping the script lightweight
- ✓Improves loading times and performance metrics
- ✓Optimises images for Google PageSpeed
- ✓Handles lazy loading for images, videos, and iframes
Where it falls short
- •Limited information on specific features or configurations
Verdict
LazyLoad Plugin offers a straightforward solution for lazy loading media, making it a practical choice for users focused on performance optimisation.
From the developer
WP Media's own description of LazyLoad Plugin, lightly tidied.
LazyLoad is the best free lazy load plugin for WordPress to lazy load images, videos, and iframes on WordPress. In a nutshell, LazyLoad displays images, videos, and iframes on a page only when they are visible to the user – that’s one crucial way to speed up your WordPress site and optimize images for Google PageSpeed.
You can lazy load images in post content or widget text, plus thumbnails, avatars, and smilies. LazyLoad takes care of iframe lazy load, too: you’ll easily replace Youtube iframes with a preview thumbnail to further speed up the loading time of your website.
No JavaScript library such as jQuery is used, and the script weight is less than 10KB.
Why is lazy loading crucial for performance?
Lazy loading is a key performance technique to make your site faster. You’ll reduce loading time, improve your Lighthouse performance score and optimize your Core Web Vitals grades.
Lazy loading your images on WordPress will help you achieve a better PageSpeed Insights score for three main reasons:
- You’ll address a specific PageSpeed Insights recommendation: [Defer offscreen images](https://wp-rocket.me/google-core-web-vitals-wordpress/defer-offscreen-images/, which means image lazy loading.
- You’ll improve the performance of two key metrics: First Input Delay (Core Web Vital) and Total Blocking Time (Lighthouse metric).
- You’ll make fewer HTTP requests – that is another way to boost your site speed and improve the Largest Contentful Paint score (another Core Web Vital).
Take a look at our complete list of reasons why you should use lazy loading. Then, turn on LazyLoad and make your WordPress website faster!
Dependencies
LazyLoad script: https://github.com/verlok/lazyload
Tagged as
quality
Speed & Performance
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