After optimizing over 5,000 WordPress websites, we’ve tested just about every caching and speed optimization plugin out there. In this post, we’re sharing the two WordPress caching plugins we actually use and recommend — and explaining why you need one even if your host already offers built-in caching.
Watch the full video walkthrough below, or keep reading for our breakdown.
Table of Contents
What Is Page Caching & Why Does Your WordPress Site Need It?
Broadly speaking, a cache is where some work has been done by a server and the result of that work is stored somewhere for quick and fast retrieval. No matter what type of caching it is — database caching, page caching, edge caching, CDN caching — it means the work has been pre-done and saved, ready to go.
In the context of WordPress, page caching means all the database lookups and PHP processing are done in advance and saved as a static HTML file, ready to serve up to the visitor. Without page caching, every time someone loads a page, all of that work has to happen from scratch. Depending on how many plugins you have and how complex your site is, that page building process can take anywhere from one second to 10 or even 20 seconds.
With page caching in place, that time drops to just one or two hundred milliseconds. That’s a massive speed difference, and it’s the number one thing a WordPress site needs to be fast.
The Two Caching Plugins We Recommend
There’s a lot of information around the web comparing detailed specifications of caching plugins. That’s a mistake. We’ve optimized over 5,000 sites and there are only two plugins we use: WP Rocket and FlyingPress. These are the leading WordPress caching and speed optimization plugins, and they both cost $59 — well worth it when one lost customer due to a slow site is going to cost more than that.
Now, these plugins do a whole lot more than just page caching. They handle speed optimization on top of that — things like deferring JavaScript, lazy loading images and YouTube videos, pre-building the cache, and managing the cache so when you update a page it clears and rebuilds automatically. There’s a checklist of 50 to 100 different speed optimization techniques, and these plugins handle a large number of them.
Our #1 Pick: WP Rocket — Because Reliability Beats Speed
WP Rocket is the caching plugin we use on the majority of client sites. It’s very popular, very mature, and very stable. One of our guiding heuristics when it comes to site speed is that reliability beats speed. You never want to sacrifice reliability for a marginal increase in speed.
What we’ve found across thousands of websites is that WP Rocket is extremely reliable and stable. It doesn’t have all the bleeding edge features that FlyingPress has, but if reliability is important to you — and it should be — then WP Rocket is the plugin to go with. If you’re a marketing manager and you know the site needs to be online, otherwise it’s your job on the line, WP Rocket is the better choice.
If you want to see exactly how we configure WP Rocket for maximum performance, check out our WP Rocket Settings Guide.
Our #2 Pick: FlyingPress — For Technical Users Who Want More Features
FlyingPress is the other plugin we use and recommend. It has more features, more knobs and dials to play with, and has direct integration with Cloudflare — in some cases, you may not even need the Cloudflare APO service if you’re using FlyingPress. Both plugins have CDN features built in, though we’d recommend using Cloudflare directly rather than a built-in CDN with WP Rocket.
However, having more features is not necessarily a good thing. FlyingPress is more technical, and what we’ve found is that for more complex websites, it can sometimes create problems. So again, we come back to reliability beats speed. If you’re technical, you understand how to fix things, and you have the time and energy to spend fiddling around, FlyingPress is probably the better plugin for you. It’s still very easy to set up, but on complex sites it may require more attention.
Why You Still Need a Caching Plugin Even If Your Host Has Built-In Caching
Some hosts like WP Engine, Kinsta, and our own hosting platform WP LFO have page caching built-in. We would still recommend using a caching plugin even if you’re on one of these hosts.
The caching plugin still does speed optimization on top of the host’s page caching. It handles deferring JavaScript, lazy loading, pre-building the cache from your sitemap, and managing the cache — so when you update a page on the website, it clears the cache of that page, refreshes it, and has the new version pre-processed and ready to go.
If the host already has caching, the plugin will typically turn off its own internal page caching and just handle all the other optimization tasks. We’d probably lean towards WP Rocket in this scenario because it’s a more straightforward setup when the host already provides caching.
This cache management is also important for WooCommerce sites. If you’re selling products and you have low stock counts — say three or five units — and they go out of stock, the caching plugin needs to update that page to show the correct stock status. Otherwise you risk selling stuff that’s out of stock or creating a bad customer experience.
Where Cloudflare Fits Into This
We often get questions about Cloudflare versus WP Rocket. It’s not one or the other. Cloudflare is a content delivery network that does some speed optimization and some firewall and security stuff. It also does something called edge caching, which is different to page caching. So you would use Cloudflare as well as one of these caching plugins — not instead of one.
We’d recommend using Cloudflare directly with your own Cloudflare account rather than relying on the CDN features built into WP Rocket. FlyingPress can integrate directly with your Cloudflare account, which is one of its advantages.
It’s also important to integrate your caching plugin with the Cloudflare API. Both plugins have a section where you can connect them to your Cloudflare account. This way, when the plugin clears the page cache (for example after you update a page), it also clears Cloudflare’s cached copy of that page so visitors always see the latest version.
Don’t Duplicate Functionality Across Plugins
A lot of people get confused about the role of different plugins and whether they should use multiple speed optimization plugins. Broadly speaking, you don’t want to have two things doing the same optimization.
When we do speed optimization, we often use WP Rocket alongside PerfMatters, and we’ll move some functions to the PerfMatters plugin because it’s better at certain tasks on certain sites — that might be something specific to the site layout that just works better with that plugin.
In some small cases, there is some crossover. For example, if you’re using an image compression plugin (which we recommend — images are always going to be better if they’re compressed on the server), we would also still recommend turning on image compression in Cloudflare because they’re two different types of image compression. But broadly speaking, you want to avoid having overlapping functionality.
Plugins We Don’t Recommend
LiteSpeed Plugin: There’s a lot of content around the web about LiteSpeed web server being the fastest and the LiteSpeed plugin being the best. Almost every single site we’ve seen with the LiteSpeed plugin is broken in some way. It is massively overkill — the amount of settings and configuration you can do with it means that for probably 99.9% of WordPress users and developers, they don’t know what they’re doing and don’t understand the nuance enough not to break things. Again, reliability beats speed. We never want to sacrifice reliability for a marginal, tiny increase in speed.
WP Fastest Cache: It’s an older plugin and it’s great, but it is missing some features needed for the modern web. There are some older plugins that are only compatible with it, so in some cases you might need it if you have a complex site with a shopping cart, LMS, or other plugin that requires a specific caching plugin.
W3 Total Cache: When we first started WP Speed Fix 10 years ago, we used W3 Total Cache because it was free and WP Rocket was brand new and not very reliable at the time. But the plugin owner has changed, the values behind the plugin have changed, and for most users, WP Rocket is a simpler, better approach for a DIYer — and FlyingPress for someone more technical.
WP Optimize: We wouldn’t recommend this one because it’s too simple — there aren’t enough features. If you’re using something like WP Optimize, you’re going to have to use other plugins to handle additional optimization tasks.
Host-specific plugins (Cloudways Breeze, SiteGround Optimizer): If we’re doing an optimization for a site on one of these hosts, we would pull out the host-specific plugin and use WP Rocket or FlyingPress instead.
Warning: Don’t Minify or Combine CSS & JavaScript
This is an important caveat with caching plugins. There are some settings in these plugins — minification and combining CSS and JavaScript — that you should not turn on.
On the modern web in 2026, minifying CSS and JavaScript does nothing for speed. Modern web servers already do gzip and Brotli compression, which makes minification redundant. What minification does do is create unique temporary file names for your JavaScript and CSS files, which breaks their ability to be cached by CDNs like Cloudflare and by the browser. Repeat visitors might end up seeing a broken website experience because the cached file names have changed.
Combining CSS and JavaScript into single files creates the same problem — temporary file names that change every time you clear the cache, invalidating cached copies in browsers and CDNs. These are optimizations that are no longer relevant on the modern web. You’re wasting server resources and running the risk of breaking things. So don’t just blanket turn on all the features in your caching plugin.
Need Help Optimizing Your WordPress Site?
If you’d rather have the experts handle it, that’s literally what we do all day. We’ve optimized over 5,000 WordPress and WooCommerce sites, and we’d love to help with yours. Head over to WPSpeedFix.com and request a free site audit — one of our team will have a look at the site and come back to you. We also have free tools including a writing report and a site speed test powered by AI that take just seconds to run. If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below.