Ever wonder which WordPress caching plugin is the best? Our team decided to find out while setting up the test site for Covinr. We tried speed tests with the following plugins:
-
Hyper Cache: Downloaded +260K with rating of 4
Quick Cache Downloaded +300K with rating of 4.5
2024 Update: This plugin has been discontinued
WP Super Cache Downloaded +3.3 million with rating of 4
-
W3 Total Cache Downloaded +1 million with rating of 4.5
Tested Theme Breakdown
The Covinr theme has a good mix of images, Javascript, CSS and HTML files. The theme is broken down below with request ratio and size ratio for each element group. This theme is a good representation of a typical modern WordPress site.
Test Results
The test was run 3 times for each plugin and the fastest load time recorded. All the plugins had default settings with client-side caching and CDN disabled. The results are below:
|
Plugin Version |
Load Time (seconds) |
Number of Requests |
Time Saved (seconds) |
|
| None | n/a | 7.56 | 64 | 0 |
| HyperCache | v2.8.9 | 6.51 | 60 | 1.05 |
| QuickCache | v111203 | 5.67 | 65 | 1.89 |
| WP Super Cache | v1.1 | 5.56 | 60 | 2 |
| W3 Total Cache | v0.9.2.4 | 2.82 | 26 | 4.74 |
Final Verdict
HyperCache, QuickCache and W3 Super Cache load up pages slightly faster. But since they didn’t minimize code, speed gains aren’t as significant. Compare that to W3 Total Cache that brought down the number of requests by more than half. The result is a site 2.5x faster than before.
So in our specific test W3 Total Cache is the clear winner.