best free WordPress plugins for website speed in 2024

WP Rocket: This is a premium plugin that offers a free version with limited features. However, the free version is still very powerful and can significantly improve your website speed. WP Rocket automatically minifies HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, enables browser caching, and lazy loads images. It also has a CDN integration option.

WP Super Cache: This is a popular free caching plugin that is easy to use and set up. It caches your website's pages to serve them to visitors more quickly. WP Super Cache also has a mobile device detection feature that can serve a different cached version of your website to mobile visitors.

W3 Total Cache: This is a more advanced caching plugin that offers a wider range of features than WP Super Cache. However, it can also be more difficult to set up. W3 Total Cache can minify files, enable browser caching, lazy load images, and integrate with a CDN. It also has a database optimization feature.

Perfmatters: This is a powerful plugin that can help you optimize your website for speed in a number of ways. Perfmatters can minify files, disable unused scripts and styles, lazy load images, and preconnect to external resources. It also has a database optimization feature.

WP Fastest Cache: This is a simple and easy-to-use caching plugin that can help you improve your website speed without a lot of configuration. WP Fastest Cache automatically minifies files, enables browser caching, and lazy loads images.

Cache Enabler: This is another simple and easy-to-use caching plugin that can help you improve your website speed. Cache Enabler automatically minifies files, enables browser caching, and lazy loads images. It also has a mobile device detection feature.

Smush: This is a popular image optimization plugin that can help you reduce the size of your images without sacrificing quality. Smaller images will load faster, which will improve your website speed.

EWWW Image Optimizer: This is another popular image optimization plugin that can help you reduce the size of your images. EWWW Image Optimizer uses a variety of techniques to optimize images, including lossless and lossy compression.

Lazy Load by WP Rocket: This is a free plugin from WP Rocket that lazy loads images on your website. This means that images will only be loaded when they are scrolled into view, which can improve your website speed.

WP-Optimize: This is a plugin that can help you optimize your WordPress database. A bloated database can slow down your website, so WP-Optimize can help you improve your website speed by cleaning up your database.