Best Free WordPress Image Compression Plugins Compared

Image size plays important role in overall website speed, if you optimize images with decent file size then your website will load faster. You may have already seen this in Google Page Speed Insights and GTMetrix. In WordPress, it is easy to compress/optimize the images with the help of WordPress Image Compression Plugins. These are Best Free WordPress Image Compression Plugins Compared, you can choose the plugin based on your requirement.

 

1. WP Smush Image Compression and Optimization

WP Smush Image Compression and Optimization plugin is one of the popular WordPress Image Compression plugin with 1 Million + active installs. WP Smush lets you remove hidden bulky information from the images you upload and reduce file size without compromising on the quality.

With WP Smush you can set a max width and height and large images will scale down as they are being compressed. You can compress images from any directory not only from media uploads using WP Smush.

If you are using the free version, you don’t have to create an account on WPMUDEV for using their API. You can compress 50 images at a time with the bulk optimization feature.

 

2. EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer is one of the popular free plugin for Image Compression with 700k+ active installs. With this plugin you can automatically optimize images you upload with media library, you can compress the images that you uploaded previously. This plugin can convert the image files to the best file format that generates the smallest size, this does all this losslessly and on your own server.

You don’t have to sign up for an account to get the API key. This plugin can support compressing the images added by other WordPress plugins and images stored from any directory. No need to signup for an account to use this plugin, you can use this plugin completely for free. Optionally there is a paid plan which provides API access and more compression features.

 

3. reSmush.it Image Optimizer

reSmush.it Image Optimizer is one of the best free WordPress image compression plugin with 30k+ active installs, this plugin can compress images up to 5MB in size.

reSmush.it can automatically optimize the images while uploading them and it can bulk optimize the previously uploaded images. It’s completely free plugin, with this plugin you can compress a maximum of 5MB once.

 

4. Compress JPEG & PNG

Compress JPEG & PNG is free WordPress image Compression plugin with 100k+ active installs. This plugin is developed by TinyPNG team. For using this plugin you have to create a free TinyPNG account. With this free account, you can compress 100 images each month.

Inside Compress JPEG & PNG settings, you can control a lot of settings to compress the images based on your requirement like what sizes you want to compress automatically and all those.

 

5. ShortPixel Image Optimizer

ShortPixel Image Optimizer is a WordPress based plugin with 100k+ active installs. It has both free and paid accounts. With the free account, you can compress up to 100 images per month. You can get the API key after installation by providing your email address.

All your new uploads will automatically be compressed, and the previously uploaded images you can bulk optimize them. ShortPixel lets you compress images both lossily and losslessly, and the original will be stored in a separate directory in case of any quality issues you can use the backups from the plugin.

 

6. Imagify Image Optimizer

Imagify Image Optimizer is a popular freemium WordPress Image Compression plugin with 100k+ active installs. Imagify Comes with three levels of compression.

1. Normal, a lossless compression algorithm. The image quality won’t be altered at all.
2. Aggressive, a lossy compression algorithm. Stronger compression with a tiny loss of quality most of the time this is not even noticeable at all.
3. Ultra, our strongest compression method using a lossy algorithm.

You can choose the level of compression you want to use. You have to create a free account to get the API key, with the free account you will get 25MB per month. You can compress previously uploaded images and the new images that you are going to upload.

 

7. Optimus – WordPress Image Optimizer

Optimus – WordPress Image Optimizer is another freemium Image Compression plugin with 50k+ active installs. Based on the image and file format, it can reduce images up to 70% which improves a lot website loading time. With the free version of this plugins, you can compress all images that are <100KB for free. While uploading the images, those images are sent to Optimus servers for compression and compressed images will be returned back to your website.

8. Imsanity

Imsanity free plugin with 200k+ active installs. Imsanity is not a compression plugin, it’s main function is to resize the images. With Imsanity plugin you can set the maximum width, height, and quality. By default WordPress, JPG image quality is set to 82. Imsanity can convert BMP files to JPG and PNG to JPG.

You can use this plugin along with Image Compression plugins. first, this plugin will resize the images if many users are uploading images on to your website. Those resized images will be compressed after that.

 

9. BJ Lazy Load

BJ Lazy Load is another great free plugin for making your website faster. It is not an image compression plugin, it helps you to load the images as the visitor’s scrolls through the page and gets close to enter the image location in the browser window. Initially, these images are replaced with placeholders.

In BJ Lazy Load settings you can choose the placeholder image and skip lazy loading specific images with classes. This plugin serves resized images in responsive design instead of loading full image.