10 Best Free Image Optimizer Plugins for WordPress (Most Popular 2023)

Updated: Jun 21, 2023 By: Dessign Team

Are you looking for the best free image optimizer plugin for WordPress? we put together a great list of most free and some paid best image optimizer plugins to slow the load of your images and optimize your website if you using large images so to get better user experience and faster loading speed websites.

What to Look for in a Free Image Optimizer Plugin?

1. Automated Optimization
2. Lazy Loader
3. How many images you can compress with free version
4. Bulk Optimization
5. Compression Quality

1. Smush Image Compression and Optimization

Active Installations: 1+ Million | Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (8000+ Reviews) | Performance: 98% | Updates & Support: Yes | WordPress: 5.3+

Resize, optimize, optimise and compress all of your images with the incredibly powerful and 100% free WordPress image smusher, brought to you by the superteam at WPMU DEV!

Smush has been benchmarked and tested number one for speed and quality and is the award-winning, back-to-back proven crowd favorite image optimization plugin for WordPress.

• Lossless Compression – Strip unused data without affecting image quality
• Super Smush – Optimize images upto 2x more than regular with our multi-pass lossy compression
• Lazy Loader – Defer offscreen images with the flip of a switch
• Bulk Smush – Optimize up to 50 images with one click
• Image Resizing – Set a max width and height and large images will scale down as they are being compressed
• Incorrect Size Image Detection – Quickly locate images that are slowing down your site
• Directory Smush – Optimize images even if they are not located in the media library
• Automated Optimization – Asynchronously auto-smush your attachments for super fast compression on upload
• Unlimited & Free – Optimize all of your images up to 5MB in size forever (no daily, monthly, or annual caps)
• Gutenberg Block Integration – View all Smush stats directly in image blocks
• Multisite Compatible – Both global and individual Multisite settings
• Process All Your Files – Smush will process PNG, JPEG and GIF files for optimum results
• Super Servers – Smush images with no slowdown using WPMU DEV’s fast, reliable Smush API

Automatically compress and resize huge photos up to 32MB. Use the Smush Pro CDN to serve stunning, high-quality images from 45 locations around the globe. 

Bulk optimize every image you’ve ever added to your site with one-click. Double your savings and fix your Google PageSpeed with the best image optimizer WordPress has ever known.

2. WP Offload Media Plugin

Active Installations: 70,000 | Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (300+ Reviews) | Performance: 98% | Updates & Support: Yes | WordPress: 5.3+

With the WP offload media plugin, you can seamlessly upload your existing media library. You can even offload your media files in the background while doing something else, and let the offload media system do its job. Bulk offloading media is also possible.

Besides, the plugin allows you to have full control over your files from the cloud throughout the media library. You can even control privacy settings without leaving your media library and decide who can save or download your media files.

One of the biggest advantages of the WP Offload Media solution is the possibility of reducing server storage space. Once you offload your files to the Publitio Media Assets Management system, you can remove the files from the server and free up storage space.

Keep in mind that image and video quality for offloaded files is set up by default. You can choose different values. For example, each offloaded video is transcoded to 480p format, while you can choose from the following video quality formats: 360p, 480p, 720p and 1080p. Of course, the larger the format, the larger the video size, and it will take more time to transcode it.

3. Autoptimize

Active Installations: 1+ Million | Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (1060+ Reviews) | Performance: 99% | Updates & Support: Yes | WordPress: 5.3+

Autoptimize makes optimizing your site really easy. It can aggregate, minify and cache scripts and styles, injects CSS in the page head by default but can also inline critical CSS and defer the aggregated full CSS, moves and defers scripts to the footer and minifies HTML.

You can optimize and lazy-load images (with support for WebP and AVIF formats), optimize Google Fonts, async non-aggregated JavaScript, remove WordPress core emoji cruft and more. As such it can improve your site’s performance even when already on HTTP/2! There is extensive API available to enable you to tailor Autoptimize to each and every site’s specific needs.

Using image optimizer plugin will help improve your SEO performance since the image will load much faster and the user experience will increase.

4. Optimole

Active Installations: 70,000 | Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (200+ Reviews) | Performance: 98% | Updates & Support: Yes | WordPress: 5.3+

FAST PROCESSING OF YOUR IMAGES FOR FAST LOADING WEBSITES ON ANY DEVICE

Our technology allows images to be reduced in size without any visual altering.The human eye cannot detect any but the browser will understand the difference. Optimole keeps your images’ details safe. Optimole best free image optimizer available.

5. Imagify

Active Installations: 400,000 | Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (700+ Reviews) | Performance: 98% | Updates & Support: Yes | WordPress: 5.3+

Dramatically reduce image file sizes without losing quality, make your website load faster, boost your SEO and save money on your bandwidth.

Speed up your website with lighter images without losing quality.

Imagify is the most advanced image compression tool, you can now use this power directly in WordPress. After enabling it all your images including thumbnails and retina images from WP Retina x2 will be automatically optimized on the fly when you will add in into WordPress.

WHY USE IMAGIFY TO OPTIMIZE YOUR IMAGES?

You already have lots of unoptimized images? Not a problem, you will love the Bulk Optimizer to optimize all your existing images in one click.

Imagify can directly resize your images, you won’t have to lose time anymore on resizing your images before uploading them.

Three level of compression are available:

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

With the backup option, you can change your mind whenever you want by restoring your images to their original version or optimize them to another compression level.

6. ShortPixel Image Optimizer

ShortPixel Increase your website’s SEO ranking, number of visitors and ultimately your sales by optimizing any image or PDF document on your website.
ShortPixel is an easy to use, lightweight, install-and-forget-about-it image optimization plugin that can compress all your past images and PDF documents with a single click. New images are automatically resized/rescaled and optimized on the fly, in the background. It’s also compatible with any gallery, slider or ecommerce plugin.

Both lossy and lossless image compression are available for the most common image types (JPG, PNG, GIF and WebP) plus PDF files.
We also offer glossy JPEG compression which is a very high quality lossy optimization algorithm. Specially designed for photographers!
Optimized images mean better user experience, better PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix results, better Google PageRank and more visitors.

Make an instant image compression test on your site or compress some images to make sure they are to your liking.

Why is ShortPixel the best choice when it comes to image optimization or PDF compression?

• popular plugin with over 200,000 active installations according to WordPress
• compress JPG, PNG, GIF (still or animated) images and also PDF documents
• option to automatically convert PNG to JPG if that will result in smaller images. Ideal for large images in PNG format.
• no file size limit
• option to freely convert any JPEG, PNG or GIF (even animated ones!) to WebP for more Google love. How to enable WebP?
• option to include the generated WebP images into the front-end pages by using the <picture> tag instead of <img>
• compatible with WP Retina 2x – all retina images are automatically compressed. How to benefit from Retina displays?
• optimize thumbnails as well as featured images. You can also select individual thumbnails to exclude from optimization.
• ability to optimize any image on your site including images in NextGEN Gallery and any other image galleries or sliders
• integrates with Gravity Forms post_image field type optimizing the images upon upload
• featured images can be automatically resized before being optimized with 2 different options. No need for additional plugins like Imsanity
• CMYK to RGB conversion
• 24h stellar support (24/7) directly from developers.
• easily test lossy/lossless versions of the images with a single click in your Media Library
• great for photographers: keep or remove EXIF data from your images, compress images with the lossless option
• works well with both HTTPS and HTTP websites
• uses progressive JPEG for larger images in order to speed up the image display
• you can run ShortPixel plugin on multiple websites or on a multisite with a single API Key
• it is safe to test and use the plugin: all the original images can be restored with a click, either one by one or in bulk
• ‘Bulk’ optimize all the existing images in Media Library or in any gallery with one click
• works great for eCommerce websites using WooCommerce or other plugins
• works great with NextGEN gallery, Foo Gallery and any other galleries and sliders
• compatible with WP Engine hosted websites and all the major hosting providers
• compatible with WPML and WPML Media plugins
• skip already optimized images
• compatible with watermarking plugins
• option to deactivate auto-optimizing images on upload
• images that are optimized less that 5% are bonus
• WooCommerce, WP offload S3 and WP Stateless compatible
• 40 days optimization report with all image details and overall 

7. reSmush it Image optimizer

reSmush.it Image Optimizer allow to use free Image optimization based on reSmush.it API. reSmush.it provides image size reduction based on several advanced algorithms. The API accept JPG, PNG and GIF files up to 5MB.

This plugin includes a bulk operation to optimize all your pictures in 2 clicks ! Change your image optimization level to fit your needs !
This service is used by more than 400,000 websites on different CMS (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Prestashop…).

The plugin includes an option to exclude some pictures of the optimizer.

Since Aug. 2016, reSmush.it allows to optimize pictures up to 5MB, for free !

8. Optimus

Optimus reduces the file size of uploaded media files automatically. Depending on the image and format, reductions in size of up to 70% are possible. Several kilobytes can be saved per image—these savings contribute positively to the performance of the blog website. What’s most impressive about the compression technology: the quality of the images is maintained.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

During the uploading process of images to the media library, the Optimus plugin simultaneously sends the images to the Optimus server, where the incoming material is processed and sent back in optimized form. Afterwards, the Optimus plugin saves the image version with a reduced file size in the media library.

Superfluous information that is saved by image processing programs and is not even necessary for displaying the image is extracted from image files. This way, the quality of the graphics remains intact while the image size can be reduced significantly. If you wish, Optimus keeps all author, EXIF and copyright information contained within the photos — the compressional gains will be correspondingly lower.

EATURES

• Progressive JPEGs
• Reduction of file size during the upload
• Optimization of all preview images of a photo
• No adjustments to code necessary
• Optional: no removal of EXIF and IPTC metadata
• Optional: HTTPS connection for the image transfer (Optimus HQ)
• Optional: conversion to the WebP image format (Optimus HQ)
• Optional: Disable automatic optimization during upload process
• Optimized for WordPress Mobile Apps and Windows Live Writer
• More advantageous PageSpeed, influencing the Ranking Factor
• Faster load times for blog pages
• Support for WooCommerce
• WordPress multisite-support
• Bulk optimization (optimize existing images)
• Optimize images generated by WP Retina 2x (incl. conversion to WebP)

PRIVACY

• After the image optimization and transfer process, the Optimus server immediately deletes all the temporarily stored files. No files are stored!
• The Optimus servers are located in Germany.

9. EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer, Reduce image sizes in WordPress including NextGEN, GRAND FlAGallery, FooGallery and more using lossless/lossy methods and image format conversion.

Why use EWWW Image Optimizer?

1. No Speed Limits and unlimited file size.
2. Smooth Handling with pixel-perfect optimization using industry-leading tools and progressive rendering.
3. High Torque as we bring you the best compression/quality ratio available with our lossy options for JPG, PNG, and PDF files.
4. Adaptive Steering with intelligent conversion options to get the right image format for the job (JPG, PNG, or GIF).
5. Free Parking The core plugin is free and always will be. However, our paid services offer up to 80% compression, and a host of other features!
6. Comprehensive Coverage: no image gets left behind, optimize everything on your site, beyond just the WordPress Media Library.
7. Safety First: all communications are secured with top SSL encryption.
8. Roadside Assistance: top-notch support is in our DNA. While API customers get top priority, we answer every single support question with care.
9. Pack a Spare: free image backups store your original images for 30 days.

Images can be optimized using tools on your own server for free (jpegtran, optipng, pngout, pngquant, gifsicle, cwebp), or can be optimized via specialized servers that utilize the best tools available in lossless or lossy mode. Our lossy compression uses unique algorithms to gain maximum compression while remaining visually lossless. Your images can even be converted to the most suitable file format using the appropriate options. Using the EWWW I.O. API will allow the plugin to work on any hosting platform, and can also be desirable if you cannot, or do not want to use the exec() function on your server, or prefer to offload the resource demands of optimization.

10. Compress JPEG & PNG images

Make your website faster by optimizing your JPEG and PNG images. This plugin automatically optimizes all your images by integrating with the popular image compression services TinyJPG and TinyPNG.

FEATURES

• Automatically optimize new images on upload.
• Advanced background optimization to speed up your workflow.
• Optimize individual images already in your media library.
• Easy bulk optimization of your existing media library.
• Automatically resize huge image uploads by setting a maximum width and/or height for more reasonable browser display.
• Display JPEG images more quickly with progressive JPEG encoding.
• Chose to preserve copyright metadata, creation date and GPS location in your original images.
• Supports compression of animated PNG.
• Select which thumbnail sizes of an image may be optimized.
• Multisite support with a single API key.
• WPML compatible.
• WooCommerce compatible (see below).
• WP Retina 2x compatible.
• WP Offload S3 compatible.
• See your usage on the settings page and during bulk optimization.
• Color profiles are automatically translated to standard RGB color.
• Convert CMYK to RGB to save more space and add compatibility.
• Dashboard widget with your total savings.
• Optimize and resize uploads with the WordPress mobile app.
• No file size limits.

11. Kraken

This plugin allows you to optimize your WordPress images through the Kraken.io API, the world's most advanced image optimization and resizing API. This plugin allows you to optimize and resize new and existing WordPress image uploads through Kraken.io Image Optimizer’s API. Both lossless and intelligent lossy optimization modes are supported. Supported filetypes are JPEG, PNG and GIF (including animated GIF). Maximum filesize limit is 32 MB. Even when using Kraken.io’s lossy optimization, our system goes the extra mile to ensure that the results are of high quality, every time. You can just install the plugin and stop worrying.
For more details, including detailed documentation and plans and pricing, please visit Kraken.io.

12. Hammy

Hammy speeds up your website by generating and serving resized images for your content area depending on content width.

Hammy takes your regular content images (only within posts and pages, not custom post types) and regenerates a number of smaller sized images. When a person visits your website, it then automatically provides them with the most appropriate image (or the smallest one possible). This makes for a better experience, especially on mobile. This uses the new WP 3.5 image code.

WILL IT WORK ON MY THEME?

Yes! (the only exception being themes with no standard posts or pages)

HOW DOES IT WORK?

When activated, the <img> tag is replaced by the <figure> tag, and the alternate image sizes are provided in a way that only jQuery can access/load. If jQuery isn’t available, it falls back to the regular image you had there in the first place.

It also takes on any classes or alternate titles from the original image. It does not make any changes to your database (i.e. content or images that you already have remain untouched).

WHAT ELSE DO I NEED TO KNOW?

• Supports Retina
• Uses WordPress 3.5 Image Code (no external dependency)
• You need to be willing to spend a few minutes configuring and playing with the breakpoints and choosing the correct parent containerto get it right.
• Hammy filters the output every single time, but only needs to generate a resized image once.