by Albert Peschar 4.9 (99 reviews)

PhastPress

Name: PhastPress
Rating: 4.9 (99 reviews)
Author: Albert Peschar

PhastPress automatically optimizes your site for the best possible performance.

PhastPress ranks #1,769 among WordPress.org plugins with 10,000+ active installations, is #73 of 1,518 in the Performance category, a 4.9/5 rating from 99 reviews, and was last updated Aug 13, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.

Compatible with WP 7.1

v3.12 Current Version v3.12

Updated 1 month ago Last Update on 13 Aug, 2026

Refreshed 9 hours ago Last Refreshed on

#73 of 1,518 in Performance Top 5% by installs Downloads -27% this week

View on WordPress.org

Rank

#1,769

-6 this week

Active Installs

10K+

-36.8%

KW Avg Position

54.4

0.4 worse

Downloads

501.8K

+91 today

Support Resolved

— No change

Rating

98%

Review 4.9 out of 5

4.9 (99 reviews)

Next Milestone 20K

Total Progress 56.5%

10K+ 20K+

349

Ranks to Climb

Growth Needed

8,000,000

Active Installs

Pro

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Rank Changes

Current #1,769

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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

4.9

99 reviews

Overall 98%

96 (97%)

0 (0%)

2 (2%)

0 (0%)

1 (1%)

Security History

Source: WPVulnerability

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

Dec 22, 2025

PhastPress [phastpress] < 3.8

CVE-2025-14388 · Fixed in v3.8
Mar 19, 2021

PhastPress [phastpress] < 1.111

CVE-2021-24210 · Fixed in v1.111

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Plugin Details

Version: 3.12
Last Updated: Aug 13, 2026
Requires WP: 6.2+
Tested Up To: 7.1
PHP Version: 7.3 or higher
Author: Albert Peschar

Support & Rating

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.9
Reviews: 99
Support Threads: 0
Resolved: 0%

Keywords

Page Speed optimisation optimization pagespeed insights speed

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TL;DR

AI summary of the plugin's readme

PhastPress is for WordPress site owners who want to improve page load performance without manual configuration. It automatically optimizes images, scripts, and stylesheets to address common performance issues flagged by tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix.

PNG quantization and JPEG recoding
Inlines small images
Converts JPEG to AVIF or WebP
Native lazy loading
Asynchronous script loading
Proxies external scripts
Inlines critical CSS
Lazily loads IFrames

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about PhastPress

No. You do not need any other plugins, such as image optimization (e.g., Smush) or file minification (e.g., Autoptimize) after you install PhastPress, because PhastPress includes all necessary optimizations. I recommend using the simple combination of PhastPress and WP Super Cache only. This reduces the potential for plugin conflicts, and it is really all you need. Fast Velocity Minify is not compatible with PhastPress, and causes PhastPress not to work. Please use either plugin, but not both.

Caching means saving the HTML from the first visit to a page for later visits, so it does not have to be generated each time. Caching also helps performance with PhastPress, because the page needs to be optimized only once. It is recommendable to use a caching plugin with PhastPress. PhastPress is not a caching plugin. I recommend using WP Super Cache in combination with PhastPress to speed up your server response time (TTFB). In case you are using another caching plugin, please read the notes below: WP Fastest Cache: Compatible with PhastPress, but non-caching optimizations must be disabled. Turn off the WP Fastest Cache options in this screenshot. W3 Total Cache: Compatible with PhastPress, but non-caching optimizations must be disabled. Specifically, the Prevent caching of objects after settings change option causes problems. Cache Enabler (by KeyCDN): Not compatible with PhastPress. Cached pages will not be optimized. Generally, PhastPress should be compatible with other caching plugins as well. Some caching plugins include optimizations of JavaScript, CSS and/or images. I recommend turning off all optimizations to avoid conflicts with PhastPress.

Yes. The core functionality of Asset CleanUp: Page Speed Booster complements PhastPress by removing unused JavaScript and CSS from the page.

PhastPress is enabled, but nothing happens You might be using a plugin that compresses the page before PhastPress processes it. When that happens, PhastPress cannot apply optimizations. For example, if you are using the Far Future Expiry Header plugin, disable the option "Enable Gzip Compression".

The "Fully Loaded Time" in GTmetrix is the amount of time taken until all network activity ceases. This measurement can be misleading because it does not take into account the order in which resources load. Normally, external resources such as scripts and stylesheets must be downloaded, parsed and executed before the page can be rendered. PhastPress changes this sequence by including all necessary resources (that is, the critical CSS) in the page, and executing scripts asynchronously, so that they do not block the rendering of the page. This causes the page to be visible earlier in the browser, but does not change GTmetrix's fully loaded time. In order to see this effect, register and log in to GTmetrix and enable the "Video" option. Then test your site (with Phast enabled), and use the "Compare" button to again test your site, but while appending "?phast=-phast" to the URL (eg, https://example.com/?phast=-phast). When the comparison loads, select the "Filmstrips" tab and you'll see the difference. The Phast-optimized version of your site should start rendering much earlier.

add_filter('phastpress_disable', '__return_true'); Make sure that this code runs during template_redirect or earlier.

Add this code to your theme's functions.php, or to a new file in wp-content/mu-plugins: add_filter('phastpress_disable', function ($disable) { return $disable || is_cart() || is_checkout(); });

PhastPress uses filesize and modification time information to detect file changes, so clearing the cache is generally not needed. When you change a script or CSS file, the change should be visible immediately after reloading. If you do want to clear the cache, you can delete all the data inside wp-content/cache/phastpress or wp-content/plugins/phastpress/cache.

By default, PhastPress delays the load of all scripts until after the DOM has finished loading, so that the browser can render the page as quickly as possible. If you wish to load specific scripts as soon as possible, such as Google Analytics, you may add the data-phast-no-defer attribute to the script. It would be preferable to also mark external scripts as async, when possible. For example: <script data-phast-no-defer> // my script goes here </script> Or: <script async data-phast-no-defer src="http://url.to.my.script/"></script> If you (or a plugin) are using wp_enqueue_script to add the script to the page, you can use the phast_no_defer data key to stop PhastPress from processing the script: wp_script_add_data('my_script_name', 'phast_no_defer', true); Make sure this is run after registering the script. If you are trying to apply this to a script loaded by a plugin, you could use the wp_print_scripts hook: add_action('wp_print_scripts', function () { wp_script_add_data('my_script_name', 'phast_no_defer', true); }); If you use the HTML source code to find the script name, note that -js and -js-extra are not part of the name. For example, for a script like <script id="jquery-core-js"> in the source code, the script name is jquery-core, and that is what you should pass to wp_script_add_data. This is applied automatically for these scripts: Google Analytics script inserted by Monsterinsights since PhastPress 1.29. Tracking script inserted by Slimstat Analytics since PhastPress 1.30. Google Analytics script inserted by Google Site Kit since PhastPress 1.75. Google Analytics script inserted by GA Google Analytics since PhastPress 1.76.

Images are optimized using a free API, provided by the creator of PhastPress. During image optimization, the following data is sent to the API: the URL on which PhastPress is used the version of the plugin the PHP version (to track compatibility requirements) the image itself Images are sent to the API only once. Processed images are stored locally, and not retained by the API. If image optimization is switched off, the API will not be used.