Try the live demoDemo , opens trybookpress.dev in a new tab
Same themes, same admin, same URLs

WordPress sites, plugins and all, faster than the PHP stack.

BookPress renders each page faster than a well-tuned WordPress setup, at about a tenth of the memory.

Page render speed
Elementor page, Intel server
74.0 ms
WordPress: 97.1 ms
WooCommerce shop, Intel server
69.7 ms
WordPress: 95.7 ms
WooCommerce shop, ARM server
46.9 ms
WordPress: 68.6 ms
Memory for the whole site
~170 MB
WordPress: about 1.7 GB

Same site on both. See the comparison

Live · trybookpress.dev

Try a real WordPress site running on BookPress.

The demo resets every 30 minutes. Until then, every visitor can see what you type.

trybookpress.devlive
BookPress engine
version (on the demo)
Theme
kadence 1.5.2
Plugins
WooCommerce, Elementor, Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, Yoast Duplicate Post, Hello Dolly
Machine
Google Cloud e2-micro
2 shared vCPU, AMD EPYC, 2.25 GHz
1 GB RAM (969 MB usable)
30 GB disk
Page cache
none
Sign in
demo / demo
Resets
every 30 minuteson the hour and the half hour, UTC

The smallest instance Google Cloud sells.

Compatibility

Still WordPress, without the weight.

BookPress replaces PHP-FPM and MySQL with one compiled engine. Your content, your theme and your admin stay as they are.

✓ Your theme renders for real

Templates, template parts, patterns and global styles render from the same theme files WordPress uses.

✓ Your plugins run, checked first

We check each plugin before it runs, so you know which ones work before your site moves. WooCommerce and Elementor run.

✓ Your admin keeps working

Log in at /wp-admin as before. Dashboard, posts, pages, editor, settings. Your WordPress password works after migration.

✓ Your URLs stay put

Permalinks, pagination, archives and ?p=123 redirects behave as they do on WordPress.

Before you move

Check if your site is compatible

Install our free plugin on your WordPress site and run the scan. It reads the plugins and theme you have installed, changes nothing, and tells you which of them run on BookPress.

  1. Download the plugin.
  2. In wp-admin, open Plugins, Add New, Upload Plugin. Choose the file and activate it.
  3. Open Tools, BookPress Readiness and run the scan.

BookPress Readiness 1.0.0, 57 KB. WordPress 5.6 or later, PHP 7.2 or later.

The comparison

The well-tuned WordPress setup we measured against

WordPress ran on PHP-FPM with OPcache and JIT, a Redis object cache and MariaDB. Both sides served the same site with no page cache, on a 4-vCPU Intel server and a 4-vCPU ARM server (Google Cloud c2-standard-4 and c4a-standard-4).

With a warm page cache, WordPress serves a repeat visit in under a millisecond. These are times for one page at a time; we are re-measuring throughput under full load on the current release.

How we measured →   Speed by site type →

FAQ

Questions people ask first

Is BookPress a WordPress fork?

No. It's an independent engine that implements WordPress behavior in native code: the theme system, the admin, the URLs. Your content and themes stay portable in both directions.

How fast is “fast”?

WooCommerce and Elementor pages render about 1.3 to 1.5 times faster than a well-tuned WordPress (PHP-FPM, OPcache with JIT, Redis object cache, no page cache on either side), at about a tenth of the memory. A site with no plugins renders about 220 times faster.

What about my plugins?

BookPress checks every plugin before it runs and tells you which ones work. A plugin that would fail comes back named, with the file and the line. WooCommerce and Elementor run. Heavy custom PHP is out of scope for now.

How does migration work?

One command in: wp bookpress import --dir=<wp-root>. One command out: wp bookpress export --dir=<wp-root>. Each command asks before it writes. Import leaves your WordPress and its database unmodified, and a site that goes in and back out is byte-identical. Both commands with their output →

What does it cost?

Per site, worked out from the infrastructure you stop paying for, from €1/site/month at Starter down to €0.45 at Agency, and per vCPU above 500 sites. Billed annually. The pricing page has the tiers and how we work the number out.

Run it on your sites

License BookPress by the site and run it on your own servers.