Best WordPress Lazy Load Plugins of 2022 [Tested & Verified]

Smush Image Optimization:

Smush Image Optimization is one of the best and most popular all-in-one image optimization plugins in the WordPress Lazy Load Plugin category. Smush Image Optimization is developed by WPMU DEV and it has a rating of 5 stars with 1 Million+ downloads.

Smush Image Optimization is available in both versions – the free version of Smush and the turbo-charged Smush Pro, which will provide you with the Smush Pro CDN.

With Pro version, you can optimize each and every image that you’ve ever added to your site with one-click and it will also automatically compress and resize huge photos up to 32MB.

WP Smush is user-friendly and very easy to use; you can optimize all your images on the fly as soon as you upload them to your WordPress website. You can also optimize up to 50 images on a single click and it strips unused data without compromising your image quality.

Smush Image Optimization has also included a wrong size image finder which will highlight your images with smart tips for scaling your images which help you to quickly locate those images that are keeping you from getting that perfect 100 on your Google PageSpeed test.

Some of the features that Smush Image Optimization offers are:

• Lossless Compression – Strip unused data without affecting image quality
• 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
• And many, many, more!

A3 Lazy Load:

A3 Lazy Load is developed by a3rev Software and it is the second most famous WordPress Lazy Load Plugin, this plugin is most popular for optimizing images, iframes, and videos in your WordPress Website.

According to A3 Lazy Load – “The more content-heavy your site the better the plugin will perform and the more you will see the improvements in performance”.

A3 Lazy Load is packed with lots of features like image lazy load, video lazy load, iframe lazy load, etc. and by using the admin dashboard of A3 Lazy Load you can easily manage what elements to be are lazy-loaded and when those elements should be visible in the user’s browser.

Some of the features that A3 Lazy Load provides are:

• IMAGE LAZY LOAD
  • Post, Pages and Custom Post Types (All Content Areas)
  • Widgets (Sidebar, header, and footer)
  • Apply to post thumbnails
  • Apply to Gravatars
• VIDEO LAZY LOAD
  • Video embedded by URL in Post and Pages (All Content Areas)
  • Video in Widget types, Text Widget, and HTML Widgets
  • Fully Compatible with the popular YouTube Embed Plugin
• IFRAME LAZY LOAD
  • WordPress embedded media
  • Facebook Like boxes with profiles, Like buttons, Recommend
  • Google+ Profile
  • Google Maps
• POST EMBED
  • Fully compatible with WordPress embed post on any site feature introduced in version WP version 4.4
  • Makes embed post load much faster
• WORDPRESS AMP
  • Built-in auto support for WordPress AMP plugin
  • Built-in support for Better AMP plugin
  • There are no setting options for exclude /amp – Lazy Load is just never applied to the /amp endpoint
  • When the URL is loaded in the browser without /amp Lazy Load is applied
• ADVANCED CUSTOM FIELDS
• LAZY LOAD EFFECTS
  • Fade-in
  • Spinner
  • Option to create a custom Lazy Load pre-load background-color

Lazy Load by WP Rocket:

Lazy Load by WP Rocket is one of the well-known WordPress Lazy Load Plugin in its category, it has a rating of 4 stars and this plugin is developed of course the WP Rocket.

It can work on the images and thumbnails in the post, pages, widgets, iframes, smileys, avatars, etc., it can also replace YouTube iframes with a preview thumbnail.

Lazy Load by WP Rocket displays the images or the iframes of a particular page only when they are visible to the user, as a result, it reduces the number of HTTP requests and improves the loading time of your WordPress website.

And the best part is Lazy Load by WP Rocket does not use any JavaScript library such as jQuery, as a result, its script size is less than 10KB.

Speed Up – Lazy Load:

Speed Up – Lazy Load is developed by Simone Nigro and the fun part is it does not require any configuration – you have to just install and activate the plugin and after that, the plugin does it all by himself. And on top of it Speed Up plugin is very lightweight – only 5 kb.

Speed Up plugin implements the “Lazy Load” technique, and avoids downloading the pictures and iframe of a web page that are not displayed on the screen until the user or the website visitor wishes to display them.

Thus, resulting in improvements in the load speed of the website and saves bandwidth.

Lazy Loader:

Lazy Loader is another free WordPress Lazy Load Plugin which is developed by Florian Brinkmann, MarcDK and it supports the lazy loading of images, videos, iframes and audio elements as well. Lazy Loader uses the lightweight lazysizes script.

And if you know some amount of coding you can do some manual modification of the markup which will allow you to lazy load background images, scripts, and styles on your WordPress website.

Some of the features that Lazy Loader offers are:

• Do not lazy load elements with specific CSS classes.
• Enable lazy loading for iFrames.
• Include the lazysizes native loading plugin that modifies images and iFrames to use the native lazy loading feature of browsers that already support it.
• Include the lazysizes unveil hooks plugin that adds support for more elements, for example, video and audio elements.
• Enable lazy loading for the poster frame of video elements.
• Enable lazy loading for audio elements.
• Include lazysizes aspect ratio plugin. This plugin calculates the needed space for images before they are loaded. That avoids content jumping when the images are loaded and makes the lazy loading work with masonry grids.
• Display a loading spinner.
• Disable the plugin on specific posts/pages (this shows a checkbox in the edit view of all public post types (except attachments) to disable lazy loading for an entire post).
• A textarea to modify the default lazysizes config values.

Lazy Load For Videos:

If you have a website with lots of videos embedded in it, then we will recommend using Lazy Load For Video as it is one of the best WordPress Lazy Load Plugin only for the video content.

But if you have fewer numbers of videos and more images than the above mention plugin will be the best to do their jobs.

Lazy Load For Videos was developed by Kevin Weber and has a 4.5-star rating with more than 9,000 active downloads. This plugin improves your WordPress website load times and increases your Google PageSpeed Score.

Though we have already mentioned above some of the WordPress Lazy Load Plugin that can also take care of the video, from our research, this is the best Lazy Load plugin for videos. This plugin was built only for the purpose of lazy loading the video contents.

Some of the features of Lazy Load For Videos are:

• Display video titles on preview images
• Pre-roll and post-roll advertisements: Convert all videos into a playlist and automatically add your corporate video, product teaser or another video advertisement to every video which is great for branding and video ads!
• Hide annotations such as “subscribe to channel” to avoid distractions
• Add custom CSS via the plugin’s admin panel
• Choose a custom color for your Vimeo player
• Hide controls from YouTube player
• Hide information like the video title and uploader when the video starts playing
• Even lazy load videos in text widgets (YouTube only)
• Choose between thumbnail sizes (standard or cover)
• Choose from several play button styles
• Choose the traditional red or the alternative white progress bar for the YouTube video player
• Don’t show related videos at the end of your videos
• Works with WordPress Multisite and many plugins such as TablePress

Zedna WP Image Lazy Load

Zenda WP Image Lazy Load is developed by Radek Mezulanik and it has a 4.5-star rating with more than 1000 active downloads.

This WordPress Lazy Load Plugin decreases the page load by progressive loading of images and other elements. These elements or the content will only load just when it reaches the visible part of the screen.

Zenda WP Image Lazy Load is compatible with Visual Composer, WooCommerce and this plugin claim to reduce your WordPress website’s load time by 90%, depending on the amount of the elements used in the webpage.

Zenda WP Image Lazy Load can also lazy load the background images of CSS and it allows you to choose to skip elements with some custom class by using skip parent element option.

Features of Zenda WP Image Lazy Load:

• Reduce up to 90% of page load time, depends on elements amount
• Compatible with Visual Composer
• Compatible with WooCommerce
• You can choose to skip all iframes or just one in a specific element
• You can choose to skip specific elements with some class
• You can show elements earlier or later than are visible on the screen
• Optional fade-in animation

WooCommerce Infinite Scroll & Ajax

WooCommerce Infinite Scroll & Ajax is the best WordPress Lazy Load Plugin for any WooCommerce Website. This WordPress lazy load plugin applies WooCommerce Lazyload and converts all the default product pagination into a Scroll or Ajax Pagination which allows infinite scrolling towards the bottom of the page.

So, in this way when a user reaches the bottom of the first page, the next page automatically appears with the help of ajax.

This plugin also offers to set different pagination types for mobiles and it also applies lazy load for the product thumbnails.

WooCommerce Infinite Scroll & Ajax has more than 130 different animation styles available with fully customizable options like custom selector for custom themes, option to change loader image and many more.

Features of WooCommerce Infinite Scroll & Ajax:

• Available Pagination Options
  • Infinite Scroll
  • Infinite Scroll with Load More Button
  • Ajax Pagination
• Different Pagination Type for small devices (Eg: Infinite Scroll in desktop and Load More Button in a Mobile device)
• BreakPoint pixel settings available to convert pagination type in small devices
• Lazy Load option available for WooCommerce thumbnails
• Convert default pagination to Infinite Scroll
• Infinite Scroll with Load More Button
• Simple Ajax Pagination available
• Works with WooCommerce
• Products per page option available
• Option to change product placeholder image
• 130 Different Animation styles available
• Import / Export function available
• Works with masonry and isotope grid layout
• Custom selector for custom themes
• Option to change loader image
• Option to add a custom class
• Fully customization option
• Callback functions available from the admin side
• For Simple Ajax Pagination Scroll Top option available
• Browser history management for Ajax Pagination
• Cross-Browser compatibility

SEO Friendly Images Pro for WordPress

SEO Friendly Images Pro for WordPress is a WordPress Lazy Load Plugin that allows you to automatically optimize all alt and title attributes for the pictures you have used in your WordPress website, to make them SEO friendly.

This plugin uses unveil.js and utilize its function to boost the performance of your WordPress Website by delaying the loading of images because images outside the viewport of your visitor won’t be loaded until the user scrolls to them.

SEO Friendly Images Pro for WordPress has also introduced a new feature into this plugin which allows you to optimize all your links in posts, pages or custom post types of your WordPress website. This plugin will automatically add title attributes to your links, based on its contents.

Features of SEO Friendly Images Pro for WordPress:

• Sync: You can sync existing alt to title and vice versa
• Override: You can override existing alt and title attributes with a custom scheme
• Scheme: Set up a scheme for your alt and title to flexibly define and optimize your content
• For all images: The plugin works great with images in posts and post thumbnails as well
• ACF Support: This plugin supports also content from Advanced Custom Fields
• Lazy Load: Speed up your website with the fastest lazy load on the web
• Auto-Update: Perfect integration in WordPress update mechanism
• NEW: SEO Links: Automatically optimize also link title attributes in posts, pages or custom post types
• SEO Proved: Default settings of the plugins are proved by an SEO consultant

JCH Optimize:

JCH Optimize plugin is not a dedicated Lazy Load WordPress plugin but it does provide the same functionalities. JCH Optimize plugin can decrease the load time of your WordPress website by providing a lot of options like combining and minifying your JS and CSS files that help in reducing the HTTP requests, minify your HTML, generate sprite to combine background images and many more.

These optimizations are applied automatically by the plugin based on how it’s configured that results in reduced server load, lower bandwidth requirements, and faster page loading times.

Some of the features of JCH Optimize:

• Page Cache
• Combine and minify JavaScript and CSS files
• HTML minification
• GZip compress the combined files
• Generate sprite to combine background images
• Ability to exclude files from combining to resolve conflicts
• Defer/Load combined JavaScript file asynchronously
• Optimize CSS Delivery to eliminate render-blocking
• CDN/Cookie-less Domain support
• Lazy load images

WP YouTube Lyte

WP YouTube Lyte is a WordPress Lazy Load Plugin which is best for the YouTube base or a video website or when you’ve got multiple YouTube videos on one and the same page.

This WordPress Lazy Load plugin is designed to lazy load your videos by inserting “Lite YouTube Embeds” which helps in loading the videos faster by allowing them to go through a responsive embed.

The look and feel of these “Lite YouTube Embeds” are as same as embedded YouTube, but it only calls the “fat” YouTube-player when clicked on which helps in reducing download size & rendering time substantially.

With this plugin, you can also add a YouTube-link for a video or an entire playlist with “httpv” instead of “http(s)” or add a Lyte widget to your WordPress sidebar and WP YouTube Lyte will replace that link with the correct performance-optimized code.

BJ Lazy Load:

BJ Lazy Load is one of the best plugins in the WordPress Lazy Load plugin category and it is developed by Bjørn Johansen, Aron Tornberg, angrycreative.

But the only problem with this plugin is that it is not getting updated and it was last tested with WordPress 4.9.11, though it has 90,000+ active installation with 4-star rating.

This plugin can replace all your post thumbnails, gravatar images, post images, and content iframes with a placeholder and loads the content as it gets close to enter the browser window when the visitor scrolls the page.

And as it works with iframes, it also covers embedded videos like YouTube, Vimeo, etc., it also allows you to fully control the loading of your content on your WordPress website.

Lazy Load XT

Lazy Load XT is not so popular like the other WordPress lazyLoad Plugins mentioned above as it has 3000+ active installation but the important part is who it works. As per our research, when we have tested this plugin with some of our sites, it did considerable well – thus it has a 5-star rating.

By using Lazy Load XT you can not only lazy load images and videos, but you can also use this plugin to minify JS and CSS files, move scripts to the site footer and load JavaScript and CSS libraries using Cloudflare CDN.

But the point where we were surprised is that the developer of Lazy Load XT has stopped publishing any updates for this plugin. It was last tested with WordPress 4.4.19 and the last update was 4 years ago – this is where we felt a little disappointed with this plugin.

Crazy Lazy

Crazy Lazy is another WordPress Lazy Load plugin which is developed by pluginkollektiv with 6,000+ active installation, 4.5-star rating, but no update is done by the developer, it was last tested with WordPress 4.9.11.

It is a simple plugin that reduces the load time of your website by loading the images only when the image should be displayed.

Crazy Lazy helps increase the performance of your WordPress website by displaying images efficiently with the help of the jQuery plugin Unveil.js, or the native JavaScript library lazyload.js. With Crazy Lazy you can exclude some images from the lazy loading by adding an attribute data-crazy-lazy=”exclude” to the images.

Conclusion:

All of the above mention plugins have done a great job, maybe the last three plugins are not getting any update from the developer but they are still being used on live websites – with a great rating. We have tested all the plugins on our different WordPress websites at our various servers and believe we have got great results.

Neither of these plugins has let us down, the only thing you have to keep in mind is what your website is all about, which theme you are using and the hosting – as the theme and hosting may vary the result of your load time.

Lazy Load is just one technique to optimize your WordPress Website, but once you have implemented this lazy loading, there are several other additional beneficial techniques that you can consider and implement to get the fastest possible website performance.

We hope that this article has helped you find your right Lazy Load Plugin for your WordPress website. If you have any suggestions or recommendations for us, feel free to share us in the comment section – we would love to get your valuable feedback and please don’t forget to share this with your friends.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):