WordPress HTTP/2 Benchmark

OpenLiteSpeed vs. nginx vs. Apache

Now more than ever, HTTP/2 performance is a critical consideration, when choosing a web server for your WordPress site. With that in mind, we put OpenLiteSpeed’s HTTP/2 implementation head to head with those of nginx and Apache. Which server should you trust to deliver your WordPress content quickly and efficiently? Spoiler alert: it’s OpenLiteSpeed!

Caching is important for WordPress, so we paired each server with the best caching solution available for that server: LiteSpeed Cache for OpenLiteSpeed, FastCGI Cache for nginx, and W3 Total Cache for Apache.

The Results

OpenLiteSpeed performed 5X better than nginx and 13X better than Apache when serving a cached WordPress site over HTTP/2.

OpenLiteSpeed + LSCache

15883 Requests Per Second

Nginx + FastCGI Cache

3203 Requests Per Second

Apache + W3 Total Cache

3203 Requests Per Second
h2load -n 100000 -c 100 -t 1 -T 5 -m 10 -H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate' https://wordpress.benchmark.com/
SERVERFINISHED IN SECREQUESTS/SECMB/SECFAILURESHEADER COMPRESSION
OpenLiteSpeed6.3015883.40122.25097.57%
nginx31.223203.0024.92028.33%
Apache8.311203.508.5600%

Try It Yourself

Feeling skeptical? It’s easy to verify these results! We followed the methodology laid out on http2benchmark.org, which means you could run the exact same tests in your own environment and see for yourself.

Test Environment

Server Tested

  • OpenLiteSpeed V1.6.4
  • nginx V1.16.1
  • Apache V2.4.41

WordPress

  • WordPress version: 5.3.1
  • LiteSpeed cache: LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress
  • nginx cache: FastCGI Cache
  • Apache cache: W3 Total Cache

Client Machine

  • Memory Size: 1GB
  • CPU number: 1
  • CPU Threads: 1
  • CPU Model: Virtual CPU 6db7dc0e7704
  • Disk: NVMe SSD

Server Machine

  • Memory Size: 1GB
  • CPU number: 1
  • CPU Threads: 1
  • CPU Model: Virtual CPU 6db7dc0e7704
  • Disk: NVMe SSD

Network

  • Traffic: 9.25 Gbits/sec
  • Latency: 0.324 ms

Cloud VM

  • Vultr High Frequency Compute 1GB VM