by Optimizing Matters 4.7 (1,428 reviews)

Autoptimize

Name: Autoptimize
Rating: 4.7 (1428 reviews)
Author: Optimizing Matters

Autoptimize speeds up your website by optimizing JS, CSS, images (incl. lazy-load), HTML and Google Fonts, asyncing JS, removing emoji cruft and more.

Autoptimize ranks #77 among WordPress.org plugins with 800,000+ active installations, is #12 of 1,518 in the Performance category, a 4.7/5 rating from 1,428 reviews, and was last updated Aug 20, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.

Compatible with WP 7.1

v3.1.15.1 Current Version v3.1.15.1

Updated 3 weeks ago Last Update on 20 Aug, 2026

Refreshed 11 hours ago Last Refreshed on

#12 of 1,518 in Performance Top 1% by installs Downloads -18.6% this week Actively maintained

View on WordPress.org

Rank

#77

— No change

Active Installs

800K+

-6.7%

KW Avg Position

15.8

0.2 better

Downloads

43.1M

+2,393 today

Support Resolved

67%

— No change

Rating

94%

Review 4.7 out of 5

4.7 (1,428 reviews)

Next Milestone 900K

Total Progress 57.1%

800K+ 900K+

Ranks to Climb

Growth Needed

8,000,000

Active Installs

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Rank Changes

Current #77

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Active Installs Growth

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Active Installs 0,000,000+

Growth +0.0%

Peak 0,000,000

Downloads Growth

Downloads

Growth

Peak

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Reviews & Ratings

4.7

1,428 reviews

Overall 94%

1,289 (90%)

34 (2%)

21 (1%)

20 (1%)

64 (4%)

Support Threads Overview

Resolved

Unresolved

Total Threads

Resolved

Unresolved

67%

Resolution Rate

Security History

Source: WPVulnerability

17 known vulnerabilities on record · 4 in the last 24 months · checked 1 week ago

Apr 27, 2026

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.15

CVE-2026-3220 · Fixed in v3.1.15
Mar 20, 2026

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.15

CVE-2026-2430 · Fixed in v3.1.15
Mar 20, 2026

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.15

CVE-2026-2352 · Fixed in v3.1.15
Dec 3, 2025

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.14

CVE-2025-13401 · Fixed in v3.1.14
Apr 25, 2023

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.7

CVE-2023-2113 · Fixed in v3.1.7
Apr 25, 2023

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.7

Fixed in v3.1.7
Apr 23, 2023

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.7

Fixed in v3.1.7
Dec 5, 2022

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.0

CVE-2022-4057 · Fixed in v3.1.0
Jul 19, 2022

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 3.1.1

CVE-2022-2635 · Fixed in v3.1.1
May 7, 2021

Autoptimize [autoptimize] < 2.8.4

CVE-2021-24332 · Fixed in v2.8.4

Showing the 10 most recent of 17 records.

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Plugin Details

Version: 3.1.15.1
Last Updated: Aug 20, 2026
Requires WP: 5.3+
Tested Up To: 7.1
PHP Version: 7.1 or higher
Author: Optimizing Matters

Support & Rating

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.7
Reviews: 1,428
Support Threads: 3
Resolved: 67%

Keywords

Optimize core web vitals images pagespeed performance

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TL;DR

AI summary of the plugin's readme

Autoptimize is for WordPress site owners who want to improve page speed without deep technical configuration. It solves slow-loading pages by optimizing and aggregating JS, CSS, images, HTML, and fonts to reduce load times.

Aggregates and minifies scripts and styles
Inlines critical CSS
Defers aggregated CSS
Moves scripts to footer
Minifies HTML
Lazy-loads images with WebP/AVIF support
Optimizes Google Fonts
Removes emoji cruft

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Autoptimize

It minifies all scripts and styles and configures your webserver to compresses them with good expires headers. JavaScript be default will be made non-render-blocking and CSS can be too by adding critical CSS. You can configure it to combine (aggregate) CSS & JS-files, in which case styles are moved to the page head, and scripts to the footer. It also minifies the HTML code and can also optimize images and Google Fonts, making your page really lightweight.

HTTP/2 is a great step forward for sure, reducing the impact of multiple requests from the same server significantly by using the same connection to perform several concurrent requests and for that reason on new installations Autoptimize will not aggregate CSS and JS files any more. That being said, concatenation of CSS/ JS can still make a lot of sense, as described in this css-tricks.com article and this blogpost from one of the Ebay engineers. The conclusion; configure, test, reconfigure, retest, tweak and look what works best in your context. Maybe it's just HTTP/2, maybe it's HTTP/2 + aggregation and minification, maybe it's HTTP/2 + minification (which AO can do as well, simply untick the "aggregate JS-files" and/ or "aggregate CSS-files" options). And Autoptimize can do a lot more then "just" optimizing your JS & CSS off course ;-)

Although Autoptimize comes without any warranties, it will in general work flawlessly if you configure it correctly. See "Troubleshooting" below for info on how to configure in case of problems. If you want you can test Autoptimize on a new free dummy site, courtesy of tastewp.com.

Starting from AO 2.1 WordPress core's jquery.min.js is not optimized for the simple reason a lot of popular plugins inject inline JS that is not aggregated either (due to possible cache size issues with unique code in inline JS) which relies on jquery being available, so excluding jquery.min.js ensures that most sites will work out of the box. If you want optimize jquery as well, you can remove it from the JS optimization exclusion-list (you might have to enable "also aggregate inline JS" as well or switch to "force JS in head").

This happens when aggregating JavaSCript and ticking the "force in head" option or when not aggregating and not deferring. Consider changing settings.

With the default Autoptimize configuration the CSS is linked in the head, which is a safe default but has Google PageSpeed Insights complaining. You can look into "inline all CSS" (easy) or "inline and defer CSS" (better) which are explained in this FAQ as well.

CSS in general should go in the head of the document. Recently a.o. Google started promoting deferring non-essential CSS, while inlining those styles needed to build the page above the fold. This is especially important to render pages as quickly as possible on mobile devices. As from Autoptimize 1.9.0 this is easy; select "inline and defer CSS", paste the block of "above the fold CSS" in the input field (text area) and you're good to go!

There's no easy solution for that as "above the fold" depends on where the fold is, which in turn depends on screensize. There are some tools available however, which try to identify just what is "above the fold". This list of tools is a great starting point. The Sitelocity critical CSS generator and Jonas Ohlsson's criticalpathcssgenerator are nice basic solutions and http://criticalcss.com/ is a premium solution by the same Jonas Ohlsson. Alternatively this bookmarklet (Chrome-only) can be helpful as well.

The short answer: probably not. Although inlining all CSS will make the CSS non-render blocking, it will result in your base HTML-page getting significantly bigger thus requiring more "roundtrip times". Moreover when considering multiple pages being requested in a browsing session the inline CSS is sent over each time, whereas when not inlined it would be served from cache. Finally the inlined CSS will push the meta-tags in the HTML down to a position where Facebook or Whatsapp might not look for it any more, breaking e.g. thumbnails when sharing on these platforms.

Autoptimize does not have its proper cache purging mechanism, as this could remove optimized CSS/JS which is still referred to in other caches, which would break your site. Moreover a fast growing cache is an indication of other problems you should avoid. Instead you can keep the cache size at an acceptable level by either: disactivating the "aggregate inline JS" and/ or "aggregate inline CSS" options excluding JS-variables (or sometimes CSS-selectors) that change on a per page (or per pageload) basis. You can read how you can do that in this blogpost. Despite above objections, there are 3rd party solutions to automatically purge the AO cache, e.g. using this code or this plugin, but for reasons above these are to be used only if you really know what you're doing.