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Free Plugin by ShortPixel v3.11.6

ShortPixel Adaptive Images

Start serving properly sized, smart cropped & optimized images, plus CSS, JS and fonts from our CDN with a click; Automatic AVIF & WebP support.

ShortPixel Adaptive Images

The facts

Rating
4.8★ from 144
Active installs
10k+
Price
Free
Last updated
20 Aug 2026
Added
Dec 2018
Requires WP
4.7
Tested up to
WP 7.1
Requires PHP
5.6.40
Downloads
1,554,862

Our analysis

AI-assisted

ShortPixel Adaptive Images is a WordPress plugin designed to optimise images on your website, enhancing performance and improving Core Web Vitals. It replaces images with properly sized and optimised versions, and delivers them via a global CDN. The plugin also supports next-gen image formats like WebP and AVIF, ensuring compatibility with modern browsers.

This plugin is suitable for WordPress users who need to address image-related performance issues, particularly those who have received feedback on image size or format from performance testing tools. It offers features like lazy loading, smart cropping, and automatic minimisation of CSS and JS files, making it a comprehensive solution for image optimisation.

Best for: WordPress users looking to optimise images and improve website performance.

What it does well

  • Replaces images with optimised versions automatically
  • Supports next-gen formats like WebP and AVIF
  • Includes lazy loading and smart cropping features
  • Minimises CSS and JS files automatically
  • No need for a separate converter for AVIF or WebP

Where it falls short

  • Limited information on specific performance improvements
  • Some features may require advanced settings knowledge

Verdict

ShortPixel Adaptive Images provides a straightforward solution for image optimisation on WordPress sites, making it a useful tool for those facing image-related performance challenges.

From the developer

ShortPixel's own description of ShortPixel Adaptive Images, lightly tidied.

An easy-to-use plugin that lets you solve any problems with images and improve your website’s Core Web Vitals in a minute.

Imagine if you could solve all your website’s image-related problems and increase pagespeed and performance with a simple click, would not that be great?
Usually, images are the biggest resource on a web page. With just one click, ShortPixel Adaptive Images replaces all the pictures on your website with properly sized, smartly-cropped and optimized images and uploads them to ShortPixel’s global CDN.
And for even more Google love, the plugin delivers next-gen WebP or AVIF images to the right browsers auto-magically! 🙂

Using ShortPixel Adaptive Images also helps with Core Web Vitals (CWV)‘s Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
This is an important SEO factor that Google uses to rank pages. The smaller the CWV values are, the better for your website.

Do I need this plugin?

If you have a WordPress website with images, the answer is most likely yes!
Have you ever tested your website with tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix and received complaints that the images are not the right size or are too big? Or that you should be using “next gen” images like WebP or AVIF? Or that the website should “defer offscreen images”?
ShortPixel Adaptive Images comes to the rescue and solves the problems with images on your website in no time.
In addition to images, CSS, JS and font files are also minimized and delivered from our global CDN.

What are the benefits?

What are the features?

  • new! you can now set your custom domain to serve images or JSS/CSS files, e.g. cdn.example.com. Read more here.
  • new, lightweight, pure JavaScript Adaptive Images Engine (jQuery no longer required)
  • same visual quality, but smaller images thanks to ShortPixel algorithms
  • smart cropping – see an example
  • serve only images of appropriate size, depending on the viewport of the visitor
  • lazy load support with adjustable threshold; browser native lazy loading support is also available
  • automatically serves WebP and AVIF images to browsers that support this format. Animated GIFs are also supported and can will converted to animated WebP and animated AVIF!
  • caching and serving from a global CDN for images as well as CSS, JS and fonts
  • CSS/JS files are minimized automatically
  • all major image galleries, sliders and page builders are supported
  • onboarding wizard with a tool that suggests the best settings for each website
  • support for low quality image placeholders (LQIP)
  • support for JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP
  • no need for a separate AVIF or WebP converter plugin, the original images are automatically converted to WebP or AVIF
  • adjustable size breakpoints when resizing images
  • possibility to disable plugin functionality for logged in users
  • multiple types of exclusions available, including and advanced Image Checker Tool
  • Easy and Advanced mode for settings with a variety of settings for an increased flexibility of the plugin functionality

Do I need an account to test this plugin?

No, just install it and activate it on your WordPress website. You will then automatically receive 500 MB of CDN traffic every month. That’s about 500 visits/month!

How much does it cost?

When using ShortPixel Adaptive Images, only CDN traffic is counted if you choose to use our CDN. With the free plan, you get 100 credits for image optimization, which is equivalent to 500 MB of CDN traffic or about 500 visits/month. Paid plans start at $4.99 and are available as both one-time and monthly plans.
Even better, if you already use ShortPixel Image Optimizer, you can use the same credits for ShortPixel Adaptive Images!

How does it work?

Different visitors have different devices (laptop, mobile phone, tablet), each with its own screen resolution. ShortPixel AI takes into account the resolution of the device and then provides the right size image for each placeholder.
Let us take a web page with a single image of 640×480 pixels.
When viewed from a laptop, the image retains its 640×480 pixel size, but is optimized and delivered from our CDN.
When the same web page is viewed from a mobile phone, the image (for example) is resized to 300×225 pixels, optimized, and delivered via our CDN.
In this way, neither time nor bandwidth is wasted for visitors.

Other plugins by ShortPixel:

Read the full description on the official page →

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