WP Super Cache vs WP Fastest Cache – Which One is Better? (Case Study)

Last Updated on March 24, 2023

Setting up a WordPress caching plugin is a must, but which caching plugin to choose? I chose two of the very best WordPress caching plugins and tested them thoroughly. In this guide, I will compare WP Super Cache vs WP Fastest Cache to determine which is better.

Why I Compared WP Super Cache and WP Fastest Cache?

Speed is one of the most critical factors that affect SEO. As an SEO professional, I want all my client’s websites to be as fast as possible.

To achieve better website speed, you must use a caching plugin on a WordPress website. Now the question is, which caching plugin is the best? There are so many of them, but I used WP Super Cache vs WP Fastest Cache.

Automattic, a company that created WordPress, has developed WP Super Cache. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins and is at the top among WordPress caching plugins.

WP Fastest Cache is also a very popular plugin but nowhere close to WP Super Cache in the number of downloads and installs. It has more than 1700 five-star reviews, which says a lot.

I wanted to test and review both plugins. So, I  ran a few tests using Pingdom. I also wanted to test them on my client’s websites. This allowed me to test WP Super Cache and WP Fastest Cache on multiple web hosting companies.

How My Website Performed Without Any Caching

Before testing the caching plugins, I first wanted to test how my website performs without any caching plugins. Here is the test result of my website without any caching.

Yeah, I didn’t believe my eyes either. This test result is horrible and will negatively impact SEO. My website was loading in more than 6 seconds. That’s completely unacceptable.

Testing My Website Performance with WP Super Cache

I wanted to see how WP Super Cache could improve my website speed. I installed and activated the plugin and set it up. The first step was to turn on caching.

The second step was to enable gzip compression. Gzip compression is important because it compresses a web page before sending it to users, which makes the page download quicker.

WP Super Cache has many advanced options, but I only wanted to enable page caching and gzip compression. I looked into minifying CSS and JS, but that was not very easy to do with WP Super Cache.

After setting WP Super Cache on my website, I tested it using the Pingdom tool. Here is the test result screenshot.

Yep, this result is much better. My website was now loading under 635 ms. It was now faster than 95% of all websites. That’s amazing!

Let’s see how WP Fastest Cache compares to such a great result.

Testing My Website with WP Fastest Cache

After installing WP Fastest Cache, I went to its settings. It was simpler than WP Super Cache, and I finished setting it up within a few seconds.

Note: I don’t have the premium version of the plugin, just the basic free version. I noticed that they have many more options in their premium version.

After the setup, I visited the Pingdom website and ran the test. Here is a screenshot of my test result.

This result is incredible! My website was loading under 528 ms now, faster than 96% of all websites.

This difference in results is because WP Fastest Cache makes it easier to combine and minify CSS and javascript files. This reduced page requests and decreased page load time by a few more milliseconds than WP Super Cache.

WP Super Cache vs WP Fastest Cache – Comparison Table

The following table shows values for WP Super Cache and WP Fastest Cache results on Pingdom.

You can clearly see that WP Fastest Cache outperformed WP Super Cache in every aspect. However, the difference isn’t too significant between the two.

Conclusion

I found both plugins, WP Super Cache and WP Fastest Cache, performed great. It can help with optimizing your website for better speed and SEO. If you are already using WP Super Cache and are happy with the results, then you should keep using it.

If you want to improve your website speed further or start a new WordPress website, I highly recommend WP Fastest Cache. I will use WP Fastest Cache on all my websites and recommend it to all my SEO clients.

I hope this case study about WP Super Cache vs WP Fastest Cache offered you a proper comparison. If you want to try any other caching plugin, here is a step-by-step tutorial to configure W3 Total Cache.