by Automattic 4.3 (1,346 reviews)

WP Super Cache

Name: WP Super Cache
Rating: 4.3 (1346 reviews)
Author: Automattic

A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.

WP Super Cache ranks #38 among WordPress.org plugins with 1,000,000+ active installations, is #4 of 1,518 in the Performance category, a 4.3/5 rating from 1,346 reviews, and was last updated Aug 26, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.

Compatible with WP 7.1

v3.1.3 Current Version v3.1.3

Updated 2 weeks ago Last Update on 26 Aug, 2026

Refreshed 11 hours ago Last Refreshed on

#4 of 1,518 in Performance Top 1% by installs Downloads -36.7% this week Actively maintained

View on WordPress.org

Rank

#38

— No change

Active Installs

1M+

-43.9%

KW Avg Position

7.2

— No change

Downloads

62.3M

+9,688 today

Support Resolved

100%

— No change

Rating

86%

Review 4.3 out of 5

4.3 (1,346 reviews)

Next Milestone 2M

Total Progress 76.9%

1M+ 2M+

Ranks to Climb

Growth Needed

8,000,000

Active Installs

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Need 230,770 more installs to reach 2M+

Rank Changes

Current #38

Change

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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

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Peak

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Reviews & Ratings

4.3

1,346 reviews

Overall 86%

994 (74%)

108 (8%)

47 (3%)

24 (2%)

173 (13%)

Support Threads Overview

Resolved

Unresolved

Total Threads

Resolved

Unresolved

100%

Resolution Rate

Security History

Source: WPVulnerability

22 known vulnerabilities on record · 0 in the last 24 months · checked 1 week ago

Oct 3, 2022

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.9

Fixed in v1.9
Oct 3, 2022

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.9

Fixed in v1.9
May 14, 2021

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.7.3

CVE-2021-24312 · Fixed in v1.7.3
Apr 12, 2021

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.7.3

CVE-2021-24329 · Fixed in v1.7.3
Mar 16, 2021

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.7.2

CVE-2021-24209 · Fixed in v1.7.2
Feb 3, 2017

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.4.9

Fixed in v1.4.9
Sep 26, 2015

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.4.5

Fixed in v1.4.5
Sep 26, 2015

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.4.5

Fixed in v1.4.5
Sep 25, 2015

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.4.5

Fixed in v1.4.5
Sep 25, 2015

WP Super Cache [wp-super-cache] < 1.4.5

Fixed in v1.4.5

Showing the 10 most recent of 22 records.

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Plugin Details

Version: 3.1.3
Last Updated: Aug 26, 2026
Requires WP: 6.8+
Tested Up To: 7.1
PHP Version: 7.4 or higher
Author: Automattic

Support & Rating

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ 4.3
Reviews: 1,346
Support Threads: 3
Resolved: 100%

Keywords

WP Cache WP Super Cache cache caching performance

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TL;DR

AI summary of the plugin's readme

This plugin is for WordPress site owners who want to speed up page load times without needing deep server expertise. It works by generating static HTML files from dynamic WordPress content so the webserver can serve pages without running heavier PHP scripts on every request.

Static HTML page caching
Mod_rewrite supercache serving
PHP-served supercache files
WP-Cache caching for known users
Garbage collection scheduling
Site preloading
CDN support via OSSDL off-linker
REST API settings endpoints

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about WP Super Cache

Go to Settings -> WP Super Cache and look for the "Cache Tester" form on the easy settings page. Click "Test Cache" and the plugin will request the front page of the site twice, comparing a timestamp on each to make sure they match. If you want to do it manually, enable debugging in the plugin settings page and load the log file in a new browser tab. Then view your blog while logged in and logged out. You should see activity in the log. View the source of any page on your site. When a page is first created, you'll see the text "Dynamic page generated in XXXX seconds." and "Cached page generated by WP-Super-Cache on YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" at the end of the source code. On reload, a cached page will show the same timestamp so wait a few seconds before checking. If Supercaching is disabled and you have compression enabled, the text "Compression = gzip" will be added. If compression is disabled and the page is served as a static html file, the text "super cache" will be added. The only other way to check if your cached file was served by PHP script or from the static cache is by looking at the HTTP headers. PHP cached pages will have the header "WP-Super-Cache: Served supercache file from PHP". WPCache cached files will have the header, "WP-Super-Cache: Served WPCache cache file". You should also check your cache directory in wp-content/cache/supercache/hostname/ for static cache files. If the plugin rules are missing from your .htaccess file, the plugin will attempt to serve the super cached page if it's found. The header "WP-Super-Cache: Served supercache file from PHP" if this happens. The pagespeed module for Apache may cause problems when testing. Disable it if you notice any problems running the cache tester.

If you only want to use the WP-Cache engine then edit your wp-config.php or create an mu-plugin that sets the constant 'DISABLE_SUPERCACHE' to 1. WP-Cache vs Supercache files All cache files are stored in wp-content/cache/supercache/HOSTNAME/ where HOSTNANE is your domain name. The files are stored in directories matching your site's permalink structure. Supercache files are index.html or some variant of that, depending on what type of visitor hit the blog. Other files are named wp-cache-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.php. Associated meta filesnames start with "meta". Those files contain information about the cached file. These files are generated by the "WPCache caching" engine in the plugin.

Comments will show as soon as they are moderated, depending on the comment policy of the blog owner. Other dynamic elements on a page may not update unless they are written in Javascript, Flash, Java or another client side browser language. The plugin really produces static html pages. No PHP is executed when those pages are served. "Popularity Contest" is one such plugin that will not work.

No, it will do the opposite. Super Cache files are compressed and stored that way so the heavy compression is done only once. These files are generally much smaller and are sent to a visitor's browser much more quickly than uncompressed html. As a result, your server spends less time talking over the network which saves CPU time and bandwidth, and can also serve the next request much more quickly.

Note: this functionality is disabled by default. You will have to enable it on the Advanced Settings page. There are 2 ways of doing this. You can use Javascript to draw the part of the page you want to keep dynamic. That's what Google Adsense and many widgets from external sites do and is the recommended way. Or you can use a WP Super Cache filter to do the job but you can't use mod_rewrite mode caching. You have to use the "simple" delivery method or disable supercaching. WP Super Cache 1.4 introduced a cacheaction filter called wpsc_cachedata. The cached page to be displayed goes through this filter and allows modification of the page. If the page contains a placeholder tag the filter can be used to replace that tag with your dynamically generated html. The function that hooks on to the wpsc_cachedata filter should be put in a file in the WP Super Cache plugins folder unless you use the late_init feature. An example plugin is included. Edit dynamic-cache-test.php to see the example code. There are two example functions there. There's a simple function that replaces a string (or tag) you define when the cached page is served. The other example function uses an output buffer to generate the dynamic content. Due to a limitation in how PHP works the output buffer code MUST run before the wpsc_cachedata filter is hit, at least for when a page is cached. It doesn't matter when serving cached pages. See this post for a more technical and longer explanation. To execute WordPress functions you must enable the 'Late init' feature on the advanced settings page.

Cached files are served before almost all of WordPress is loaded. While that's great for performance it's a pain when you want to extend the plugin using a core part of WordPress. Enable 'Late init' mode on the Advanced settings page and cached files will be served when "init" fires. WordPress and it's plugins will be loaded now.

This plugin caches entire pages but some plugins think they can run PHP code every time a page loads. To fix this, the plugin needs to use Javascript/AJAX methods or the wpsc_cachedata filter described in the previous answer to update or display dynamic information.

WordPress deletes the plugin folder when it updates a plugin. This is the same with WP Super Cache so any modified files in wp-super-cache/plugins/ will be deleted. You can put your custom plugins in a different directory in a number of ways. You can define the variable $wp_cache_plugins_dir in wp-config.php or wp-content/wp-cache-config.php and point it at a directory outside of the wp-super-cache folder. The plugin will look there for it's plugins. Or if you distribute a plugin that needs to load early you can use the function wpsc_add_plugin( $filename ) to add a new plugin wherever it may be. Use wpsc_delete_plugin( $filename ) to remove the plugin file. See #574 or this post on writing WP Super Cache plugins.

When a visitor leaves a comment the cached file for that page is deleted and the next visitor recreates the cached page. A page takes time to load so what happens if it receives 100 visitors during this time? There won't be a cached page so WordPress will serve a fresh page for each user and the plugin will try to create a cached page for each of those 100 visitors causing a huge load on your server. This feature stops this happening. The cached page is not cleared when a comment is left. It is marked for rebuilding instead. The next visitor within the next 10 seconds will regenerate the cached page while the old page is served to the other 99 visitors. The page is eventually loaded by the first visitor and the cached page updated. See this post for more.

Those bots usually only visit each page once and if the page is not popular there's no point creating a cache file that will sit idle on your server. However you can allow these visits to be cached by removing the list of bots from "Rejected User Agents" on the Advanced settings page. A category page is showing instead of my homepage A tiny proportion of websites will have problems with the following configuration: Uses a static page for the front page. Uses /%category%/%postname%/ permalink structure. Sometimes a category page is cached as the homepage of the site instead of the static page. I can't replicate the problem but a simple solution is to use the "Simple" mode. You can also enable "Extra homepage checks" on the Advanced Settings page.