9 WordPress Lazy Load Plugins Compared - 2024

And we are getting our WordPress Lazy Load Plugins list started with a free plugin called BJ Lazy Load. What this plugin does is it makes your site load faster and it saves bandwidth. How it works is that it “replaces all of your post images, post thumbnails, gravatar images, and content iframes with a placeholder and loads the content as it gets close to entering the browser window when the visitor scrolls the page”.

A nice perk of this plugin is that it is ready to be translated into a few different languages. You can translate BJ Lazy Load into: Russian, Hebrew, Norwegian and Polish. Because this plugin can work with iFrames it also covers embedded videos from various sources such as Vimeo and YouTube. You are also able to load other images and iframes in your theme by using a filter. And lastly, BJ Lazy Load also work with the RICG resposnive images plugin so you can have resposnive images as well.

The AJAX Load More is considered to be “the ultimate WordPress infinite scroll plugin” specific for lazy loading various things such as: posts, pages, comments, etc. using AJAX powered queries. With this plugin you will be able to build complex WordPress  queries that are custom to you by using the AJAX load more shortcode builder.

Then just add the generated shortcode to your page by using the content editor or by just directly putting it into your template files. The AJAX Load More plugin has multisite compatibility which is great because you can manage repeater templates on all sites in your network. There are also tons of addons available with this plugin as well to give it even more functionality.

More Features of AJAX Load More Are:

• Ajax filtering
• Multiple instances
• Query parameters
• Setting Panel
• Shortcode builder

Next up of our WordPress Lazy Load Plugins is another free plugin called Lazy Load created by WP Rocket. This plugin will only show images or iframes on a page when it is visible to the user. The benefit of doing this is that it lowers the number of HTTP requests mechanism and it improves the loading time.

The Lazy Load plugin works for various things such as: thumbnails, all of the images in the content of your post or in a widget text, smilies, avatars and iframes. There is no Javascript library such as Jquery, that is used and the script of this plugin is less than 10KB. You will also have the ability to replace YouTube Iframes by a preview thumbnail which will work to increase the loading time of your WordPress site.

With the WP YouTube Lyte plugin you will be able to lazy load the videos on your site by inserting responsive Lite YouTube Embeds. These seem like normal embedded YouTube videos but when they are clicked on they will actually reduce in download size. You are able to configure this plugin to cache YouTube thumbnails locally which will improve both the performance and privacy.

You can also add a YouTube link for a video or an entire playlist by using httpv instead of http. In addition, you also have the option to add a Lyte widget to the sidebar and WP YouTube Lyte with then replace that link with the correct performance optimized code. There are several shortcodes as well for you to use. This plugin is fully responsive so no matter what kind of device your user is using to access your site, this plugin can format to fit its screen size.

And we have come to number five of our WordPress Lazy Load Plugins with the WordPress Advanced Lazy Load plugin. This plugin was created to give your WP website more speed. It will do things like delay image loading on longer pages of your site and the images that are outside of viewport won’t be loaded until a user scrolls to them.

What will happen once you have installed and activated this plugin is that it will load the text of the page first and then after load the images on your site. The Advanced Lazy Load plugin loads the images later based on user screen scrolling by Jquery script. As the site’s users scrolls down, more images will load, there is no need to call back to any external server.

More Features of the Advanced Lazy Load Plugin Are:

• You will have the ability to skip specific pages and URLs
• Able to skip image class
• On and Off Lazy load for mobile devices

We move on to the Lazy Load XT WP plugin, which is another free plugin choice. With this plugin you will have the ability to lazy load images on your site as well as YouTube and Vimeo videos and iframes. The Lazy Load XT plugin is thought to be one of the fastest and lightweight lazy load plugins in the WordPress plugin directory.

It is also fully customizable for those of you who like to have things exactly the way you want. How the Lazy Load XT plugin works is that by loading the Lazy Load XT script and then replacing the src attributes with data-src when the content of a post or page is loaded on to the front end of your WordPress site.

What is great about the A3 Lazy Load WordPress plugin is that it is mobile oriented so it was designed to work extra well on mobile devices. It is a super easy to use plugin that will speed up your WP site’s page load speed. This is one of the most feature packed lazy load WP plugins available so you know you are in for something great. By going to your admin settings you can decide which items will be lazy loaded once they become visible to your site’s users.

You will be able to lazy load images with this plugin which is great because images are what tend to slow down web pages the most so having them be lazy loaded is great for your site’s speed. You will be also able to embed videos from various sources such as YouTube or Vimeo onto your site. In addition, there is lazy load support built into the as Lazy Load plugin for iframes.

And last but not least we have come to the WP Images and Lazy Load Slideshow plugin. This plugin was created to be used for a few things. One of the things it can be used for is lazy loading images on an entire site. This way every single image will lazy load to help improve the speed of your website. You can also add a lightbox effect or a gallery slideshow effect to certain images that you custom choose.

And lastly there is a custom HTML setting so you can save HTMLs like custom CSS for images, tracking codes, and more. Each of these features can act independently of each other so if you only want to use one of them it is no problem. The Images Lazy Load and Slideshow plugin also comes with three native effects: prettyPhoto, fancybox, and slimbox2.