# xSpeed Cache: Free vs Pro

> How the xSpeed Cache Free and Pro plans compare, feature by feature — all 157 of them.

Page: https://xspeedcache.com/free-vs-pro

157 features compared across 10 areas. 95 are in the free plugin; 62 require Pro.
Last updated 2 September 2026.

## Feature comparison


### Overview

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | ✓ | ✓ |
| xSpeed Hub connection | ✓ | ✓ |

### Cache


#### Page Cache

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Cache expiry (hours) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Excluded URLs | ✓ | ✓ |
| Excluded cookies | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bypass user-agents | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ignored query parameters | ✓ | ✓ |
| Purge after updates | ✓ | ✓ |
| Separate mobile cache | ✓ | ✓ |

#### Preloader


_Crawl Now_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Crawl schedule (manual / hourly / daily / weekly) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Batch size | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sitemap URL (optional) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Warm new content immediately | ✓ | ✓ |
| Re-warm after comments | ✓ | ✓ |

_Scheduled Prewarming_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Enable scheduled prewarming | — | ✓ |
| Warm scheduled posts on publish | — | ✓ |
| Max URLs per run | — | ✓ |

_Predictive Warming_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Enable predictive warming | — | ✓ |
| Crawl budget (URLs per run) | — | ✓ |
| How often to warm | — | ✓ |
| Skip already-warm pages | — | ✓ |

#### Browser Cache

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Enable browser cache headers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Static asset TTL | ✓ | ✓ |
| HTML TTL | ✓ | ✓ |

#### Object Cache

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Backend (Redis / Memcached) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Redis host | ✓ | ✓ |
| Redis port | ✓ | ✓ |
| Redis user | ✓ | ✓ |
| Redis password | ✓ | ✓ |
| Redis database | ✓ | ✓ |
| Memcached host | ✓ | ✓ |
| Memcached port | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cache key prefix | ✓ | ✓ |
| Connection timeout (seconds) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Persistent connections | ✓ | ✓ |

#### Advanced Cache


_What to cache_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Cache 404 pages | — | ✓ |
| 404 cache lifetime (minutes) | — | ✓ |
| Cache search results | — | ✓ |
| Search cache lifetime (minutes) | — | ✓ |

_Feeds & API_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Cache feeds | — | ✓ |
| Feed cache lifetime (hours) | — | ✓ |
| REST API caching | — | ✓ |
| Default TTL (minutes) | — | ✓ |
| Route rules | — | ✓ |

_Rules & bypass_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Custom cache rules | — | ✓ |
| Maintenance-aware caching | — | ✓ |
| Enable maintenance-aware caching | — | ✓ |

#### Adaptive Cache

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| AI-suggested cache TTL (from 24h traffic) | — | ✓ |

### Optimization


#### CSS & JavaScript


_Minify_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Minify HTML | ✓ | ✓ |
| Minify CSS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Minify JavaScript | ✓ | ✓ |
| Combine CSS | ✓ | ✓ |
| Combine JavaScript | ✓ | ✓ |
| Defer JavaScript | ✓ | ✓ |
| Delay JavaScript until interaction | ✓ | ✓ |
| Delay only these scripts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Delay failsafe timeout (ms) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Defer / Delay Exclusions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Load CSS asynchronously | ✓ | ✓ |
| Remove asset query strings | ✓ | ✓ |

_Critical CSS_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Critical CSS | — | ✓ |
| Defer remaining stylesheets | — | ✓ |
| Learn the fold from real visitors | — | ✓ |

_Unused CSS_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Unused CSS | — | ✓ |
| Learn from real visitors | — | ✓ |
| Never prune these selectors | — | ✓ |

#### Compression


_GZIP_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| GZIP compression | ✓ | ✓ |

_Brotli_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Brotli | — | ✓ |
| Pre-compress cached files | — | ✓ |
| Compression quality | — | ✓ |

#### Media Optimization


_Lazy Loading_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Lazy-load images | ✓ | ✓ |
| Lazy-load iframes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Lazy-load HTML5 videos | ✓ | ✓ |
| Click-to-play video facade | ✓ | ✓ |
| Eager-load first N images (LCP) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Add missing image dimensions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Excluded Images | ✓ | ✓ |

_Image Optimization_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Convert to WebP | — | ✓ |
| Convert to AVIF | — | ✓ |
| WebP quality | — | ✓ |
| AVIF quality | — | ✓ |
| Serve WebP/AVIF for every image (server rewrite) | — | ✓ |
| Convert existing images (bulk) | — | ✓ |

_Smart Image_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Smart Image (AI) | — | ✓ |

#### Fonts

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Add font-display: swap | ✓ | ✓ |
| Preload Font URLs | ✓ | ✓ |

#### Resource Hints


_Hints_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Preload LCP image | ✓ | ✓ |
| Images to Preload | ✓ | ✓ |
| Exclude From Preload | ✓ | ✓ |
| Preconnect to font hosts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Extra Preconnect Hosts | ✓ | ✓ |

_SmartPredict_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Enable SmartPredict | — | ✓ |
| Minimum confidence (%) | — | ✓ |
| Max prefetches per page | — | ✓ |

#### Bloat Control

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Disable dashicons | ✓ | ✓ |
| Disable oEmbed | ✓ | ✓ |
| Disable RSS feeds | ✓ | ✓ |
| Disable XML-RPC | ✓ | ✓ |
| Strip jQuery Migrate | ✓ | ✓ |
| Restrict REST API to logged-in | ✓ | ✓ |

#### Heartbeat

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard heartbeat control | ✓ | ✓ |
| Editor heartbeat control | ✓ | ✓ |
| Frontend heartbeat control | ✓ | ✓ |
| Throttle frequency | ✓ | ✓ |

### Network


#### CDN

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| CDN URL rewriting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Included file extensions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Excluded patterns | ✓ | ✓ |

#### Cloudflare

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Zone connection & verify | — | ✓ |
| Authentication | — | ✓ |
| API Token | — | ✓ |
| Auto-purge on xSpeed purge | — | ✓ |
| Development mode | — | ✓ |
| Cloudflare APO | — | ✓ |
| Cache level | — | ✓ |
| Browser cache TTL (seconds) | — | ✓ |

### Health & Insights


#### Health


_Overview_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Hit-ratio chart (24h) | ✓ | ✓ |
| System diagnostics | ✓ | ✓ |
| Activity log | ✓ | ✓ |
| Next-best-action recommendation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full rule-based audit (High / Medium / Low) | — | ✓ |
| Performance analytics (slowest URLs) | — | ✓ |

_Visitors_

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Real-user monitoring / Visitors (RUM) | — | ✓ |
| Enable RUM beacon | — | ✓ |
| Sample rate (%) | — | ✓ |
| Exclude logged-in users | — | ✓ |

#### Speed Test

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| External performance scores (PageSpeed / GTmetrix) | ✓ | ✓ |

### Tools


#### Database

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Scan & clean bloat (revisions, spam, transients…) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Optimize tables | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduled auto-cleanup | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-Cleanup Types | ✓ | ✓ |

#### Migration

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Import from other cache plugins | ✓ | ✓ |
| One-click cache profiles | — | ✓ |
| Save & share config | — | ✓ |

#### Logs

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Recent cache & settings activity | ✓ | ✓ |

### AI & Agents


#### MCP Server

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Token / OAuth | ✓ | ✓ |
| Read & write access scopes | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI tool catalog | ✓ | ✓ |
| Activity / audit log | ✓ | ✓ |

#### xSpeed Hub

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Connect site | ✓ | ✓ |
| Connect AI | ✓ | ✓ |
| Control All sites | ✓ | ✓ |

#### AI Privacy

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Require consent before AI data collection | ✓ | ✓ |
| Consent banner text | ✓ | ✓ |

#### AI Provider

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini / OpenRouter keys | — | ✓ |
| Model selection | — | ✓ |
| Usage counters | — | ✓ |

### Settings

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| License activation | — | ✓ |
| Branding | — | ✓ |
| Multisite | — | ✓ |
| Help & Support | ✓ | ✓ |

### Others

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Setup wizard | ✓ | ✓ |
| Command palette (⌘K search) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Runs on Apache, nginx, LiteSpeed, IIS | ✓ | ✓ |
| WordPress Multisite support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full WP-CLI command set | ✓ | ✓ |

### Support

| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Updates & support | ✓ | 1 year / Lifetime |
| Priority support | — | ✓ |

## Pricing

- Free: $0, forever. No trial clock, no credit card. All 95 free features on one site.
- Pro: from $29 / yr, or $79 once for lifetime. Four tiers by site count; every tier ships every Pro feature.
- 14-day money-back guarantee on every paid plan.

Full plan detail: https://xspeedcache.com/pricing

## FAQ

### Is the free version a trial?

No. xSpeed Cache Free is free forever, with no time limit, no credit card and no feature that stops working after a month. It is the same caching engine the paid plans run — Pro adds depth on top, it does not unlock the basics.

### What do I actually get by upgrading to Pro?

Mostly two things: optimizations that need heavier processing (Critical CSS, Remove Unused CSS, WebP and AVIF conversion, Brotli) and the measurement layer that tells you whether any of it worked (Performance Score, per-URL hit and miss heatmap, real-user monitoring, continuous PageSpeed tracking, self-healing cache).

### Can I run the free version on a production site?

Yes, and plenty of sites do. Free covers page caching, object caching, preloading, minification, lazy loading, database cleanup and the MCP server. If your site is fast enough with those, you do not need Pro.

### Do I lose my settings when I upgrade?

No. Pro installs alongside the free plugin and reads the configuration you already have. Nothing is reset, re-entered or re-tuned.

### Is the MCP server and AI control a paid feature?

No. The MCP server and xSpeed Hub connection ship in the free plugin, so you can drive caching from Claude or ChatGPT without paying anything. Pro adds bring-your-own-key AI providers on top.

### What happens when my yearly licence expires?

The plugin keeps working and your site stays cached. You stop receiving updates and support until you renew. Lifetime plans never expire.

## Related

- Full feature list: https://xspeedcache.com/features
- Pricing: https://xspeedcache.com/pricing
- vs WP Rocket & W3 Total Cache: https://xspeedcache.com/comparison
- Documentation: https://xspeedcache.com/docs