LiteSpeed Cache

Item: LiteSpeed Cache
Rating: 91
Author: Fast WordPress

by LiteSpeed Technologies

Server-level caching and image optimisation, free on LiteSpeed hosts.

91 · Fast4.7FreeLight impact

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This link may earn us a commission. It does not affect the score. Last tested 1 September 2026.

Measured result

LiteSpeed Cache on bench-01

Performance score

Measured on a 2 vCPU reference host

LCP: 1.31 s
CLS: 0.02
TTFB: 141 ms
Page: 588 KB
Requests: 31
Impact: Light

Median of 3 cold-cache runs, 1 September 2026.

How we tested

A clean WordPress 6.8 install on a 2 vCPU / 4 GB London host, PHP 8.3, 20 posts and one page builder template. We record a baseline, activate LiteSpeed Cache with its default settings, and re-run three cold-cache tests. The published figure is the median.

Try LiteSpeed Cache live

Press play to start a private, throwaway WordPress site in your browser with LiteSpeed Cache version 7.9.1 already installed. Nothing is saved and nothing touches your own site: close the page and it disappears.

Open the demo full screenSandbox provided by WordPress Playground, the official WordPress in-browser sandbox. The admin login is filled in for you.

Where LiteSpeed Cache ranks elsewhere

LiteSpeed Cache does not appear in the published "best of" lists we track from WPBeginner, TechRadar, Kinsta, Themeisle and similar sites. That is not a mark against it - those roundups are short and skew towards the biggest names.

What changed in the latest version

v8.0Latest release

🌱 OptiMax OptiMax to maximize the page score.

v7.9.1

Core Aligned the runtime PHP and WordPress guards with the published minimum requirements.
ESI Prevented Guest Mode pages from creating ESI subrequests when an integration registered its ESI hooks before Guest Mode detection.
ESI Bound ESI execution to the signed query payload so POST parameters cannot replace validated block data.
Image Optimize Fixed a fatal error when the WordPress HTTP fallback could not download an image.
Image Optimize The image optimization callback is now verified by a QUIC.cloud signature instead of the source IP address, and every notified download location is validated before use.
Image Optimize Successful callback retries now ignore rows already returned to the raw queue without blocking other live rows in the same batch.
Image Optimize An image whose queued file can no longer be verified against its attachment is now dropped instead of being sent back for optimization, so it can no longer request optimization again on every cron run.
Image Optimize Bounded and expired pending image-completion notifications without keeping the image pull cron running indefinitely.

v7.9

Cloud Changed Health service to run asynchronously, resuming through WP cron when the cloud defers the request.
Cache Respected the existing cache control header when sending the default WP header. (dieter93)
Conf Updated default cache login value to false.
Core Minimum required PHP version escalated to PHP v7.4.0.
Core Minimum required WP version escalated to WP v6.0.
Media Improved WebP/AVIF data handling and inline script output.
CDN Stripped file types from settings when the matching Include Images/CSS/JS toggle is on.
CDN Added Cloudflare purge only when Cloudflare is active. (PR#996)

Release notes are the developer's own words, published on WordPress.org. Read the full changelog

Pros & cons

Server-level cache is faster than any PHP-based alternative
Bundled image optimisation and CDN quota at no cost
Granular crawler and ESI support for logged-in pages

Full benefit requires LiteSpeed or OpenLiteSpeed hosting
The settings screen is genuinely intimidating
Some optimisation features queue against a shared remote service

The full review

On matching LiteSpeed hosting, this plugin produces the lowest time to first byte we record - 141 ms against 182 ms for the closest PHP-cached competitor - because the cache is served by the web server rather than by WordPress.

Away from that hosting, the picture changes. The page cache falls back to a PHP implementation and the advantage largely disappears, though image optimisation and the CDN quota remain useful.

Treat the settings screen as a staged project: enable caching, measure, then add one optimisation group at a time.