A free plugin that downloads Google Fonts to your own server and rewrites your stylesheets to use the local copies. One job, done properly, at no cost.

The result is that a render-blocking request to a third-party domain becomes a request to the server already serving your page, on a connection already open. That removes the lookup and the negotiation from your critical render path entirely. It simultaneously removes a processor from your privacy documentation, because visitor IP addresses stop being transmitted to Google before anyone has consented to anything. Two problems, one free plugin, no ongoing cost and nothing to configure beyond running it once. If you do nothing else from this article, do this.

• Price: Free
• Handles: Downloading and self-hosting Google Fonts
• Best for: Every site still loading fonts from Google
• Watch out for: Check every template renders in the right face afterwards

$29.95 a year for one site, $59.95 for three, $124.95 for unlimited sites, with 15% off on renewal, and the most complete script control available in one plugin.

Its script manager disables individual scripts on individual pages, which is the most effective intervention available because a script that never loads costs nothing at all. It also hosts fonts locally, delays third-party scripts until interaction, and disables WordPress features that generate requests you do not need. The combination means one purchase covers fonts, plugin scripts and third-party tags rather than assembling three tools. At $124.95 for unlimited sites, an agency applying this across a portfolio is buying the single best ratio of performance improvement to money in this pillar.

• Price: $29.95/yr for 1 site; $124.95 for unlimited
• Handles: Per-page script control, local fonts, script delay
• Best for: Doing all of this from one plugin
• Watch out for: Disabling the wrong script breaks a feature quietly

A free plugin doing the core of what Perfmatters charges for: unloading CSS and JavaScript on pages that do not need them, with a paid tier for refinements.

It is the right way to test whether script removal is your fix before spending anything. Install it, look at what loads on a typical post, and unload the contact form library, the ecommerce scripts, the slider you use on one page. If your interaction responsiveness improves, you have confirmed the approach and can decide whether the paid alternative’s convenience is worth its price. It asks more attention than Perfmatters and offers the same fundamental lever, and the same risk applies to both: unload something a template quietly depends on and a feature breaks somewhere you did not look.

• Price: Free, with a paid tier
• Handles: Unloading CSS and JavaScript per page
• Best for: Proving the approach before paying for convenience
• Watch out for: Check every template after each change

$59 a year for one site, $119 for three, $299 for fifty, and relevant here for delaying third-party scripts until the visitor interacts with the page.

Delay is the safer cousin of removal. Holding a chat widget, an analytics tag or an advertising script until first interaction takes it out of the initial load entirely, improving both the first paint and the early interactions, without you having to decide which pages need it. It also hosts fonts locally and preloads them. The distinction from Perfmatters is worth keeping in mind: WP Rocket defers work, Perfmatters removes it, and removal is more effective while deferral is safer. Many sites end up running both, which is coherent since one is a caching plugin and the other is not.

• Price: $59/yr for 1 site, $119 for 3, $299 for 50
• Handles: Script delay until interaction, local font hosting
• Best for: Improvement without deciding per page
• Watch out for: Delaying analytics loses data from immediate bounces

Starter $59 a year for one site, Pro $109 for three, Business $229 for 25 and Unlimited $279, with a 14-day trial giving full access before any charge.

Its handling of third-party resources is the most aggressive here: fonts self-hosted and preloaded automatically, scripts delayed and reordered for interaction responsiveness rather than for lab scores. On a site heavy with external tags, that produces the largest measured improvement in this comparison and the highest chance of breaking something, which is precisely why the trial exists. The $279 unlimited tier is the best portfolio price available. Use the trial on a site with a genuine third-party problem, and compare field data over the following month rather than the score on the day.

• Price: $59/yr for 1 site; $279 for unlimited
• Handles: Automatic font self-hosting, aggressive script delay
• Best for: Script-heavy sites, and agencies
• Watch out for: Aggressive by design; use the trial properly

Free, permanent, and better than any optimisation applied to keeping it. Once you have the list of what your site loads from elsewhere, the question worth asking about each entry is whether it earns its place.

The recurring findings across almost every audit: two or three analytics products where one would do, usually because nobody removed the old one when the new one arrived. A heat mapping tool installed for a redesign that finished two years ago. A chat widget producing a handful of conversations a month while taxing every visitor. Advertising pixels for campaigns that ended, still firing and still collecting data you now have to disclose. And a tag manager container nobody has opened since it was set up, quietly loading whatever somebody added in 2023. Each removal improves speed, reduces your privacy surface, and costs nothing but the conversation.

• Price: Free
• Handles: The cost permanently, rather than rescheduling it
• Best for: Every site, after doing the audit
• Watch out for: Get agreement before removing marketing tooling