BookPress serves WordPress sites from a compiled native engine instead of the PHP stack. Same themes, same admin, same URLs. Dynamic pages render in under a millisecond, and an idle site costs megabytes, not gigabytes.
Request early access See how it worksNaive WordPress runs the official Docker image: Apache, mod_php, OPcache, MariaDB, no page cache. Optimized WordPress is the same stack with a real page cache added, WP Super Cache, installed and switched on, with every cache hit below verified by response headers and a matching page-generation timestamp on repeat requests. BookPress runs BookPress. All numbers are keep-alive p50 latencies from the same benchmarking client on identical hardware.
Methodology: identical hardware, identical Twenty Twenty-Five theme and seed content. Naive WordPress is the official Docker image, Apache and mod_php with OPcache, MariaDB, no page cache. Optimized WordPress is the same stack plus WP Super Cache, configured the way a competent host would configure it: search excluded from caching, everything else cached, the hit verified. Keep-alive p50, one connection, hundreds to thousands of requests. The benchmark client and the full WordPress setup are published, so you can run this yourself.
A note on bytes: every stack here compresses. Apache's mod_deflate ships enabled in the official WordPress image, and BookPress compresses natively, no plugin, no server config. WordPress produces 69–74 KB of markup for this page and ships it as 11.9 KB gzipped. BookPress produces 17.6 KB of markup for the same page and ships 3.1 KB. Compressing costs BookPress about a third of a millisecond, already included in the gzip row below, and still lands 2.7× faster than the optimized cache hit.
| WordPress | Optimized WordPress | BookPress | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front page, cache miss (p50) | 46.6 ms | 46.6 ms | 0.31 ms |
| Front page, cache hit (p50) | 46.6 ms | 1.9 ms | 0.31 ms |
| Blog post, cache miss (p50) | 53.1 ms | 53.1 ms | 0.39 ms |
| Blog post, cache hit (p50) | 53.1 ms | 1.6 ms | 0.39 ms |
Search ?s=speed (p50) | 45.8 ms | 51.2 ms | 0.39 ms |
| Req/s, one connection, front page | 20 | 489 | 2,773 |
| Memory, whole stack | ~255 MB | ~245 MB | ~5.7 MB |
| Transfer size, front page (gzip) | 11.9 KB | 11.9 KB | 3.1 KB |
| Front page, gzip on (p50) | 46.6 ms | 1.9 ms | 0.70 ms |
Every WordPress request today spins up a PHP interpreter, loads core, theme, and plugins, and talks to a MySQL server. Then it does it all again for the next visitor. BookPress replaces that machinery with a compiled engine and keeps everything your site actually is: the content, the theme, the admin.
Block themes like Twenty Twenty-Five render natively. Templates, template parts, patterns, and global styles produce the same HTML and CSS WordPress produces, from the same unmodified theme files.
Log in at /wp-admin like always. Dashboard, posts, pages,
editor, settings. Your existing WordPress password verifies as-is after
migration. No resets, no new accounts.
Migration streams your WordPress content straight in. Everything imports losslessly and exports back out just as cleanly. It stays your data, in both directions.
Permalinks, pagination, archives, even ?p=123 redirects
behave exactly like WordPress. Your SEO never notices the engine swap.
BookPress doesn't try to run every WordPress site on day one. It targets the sites that make up the bulk of the web: brochure and business sites, blogs, portfolios, and agency-built sites on a supported stack. WooCommerce and heavy custom PHP aren't supported yet. A free compatibility scan gives you a per-site verdict before anything moves. Clean fit: migrate in one click. Not a fit: nothing changes for you.
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.
Measured, not estimated, across three stacks on the same machine: naive WordPress (the official Docker image, no page cache), optimized WordPress (the same stack plus a real page-caching plugin, verified to actually hit), and BookPress. The front page: 46.6 ms on naive WordPress, 46.6 ms on optimized WordPress before its cache is warm, 1.9 ms after a verified cache hit, and 0.31 ms on BookPress. Search, a page no cache can serve: 45.8 ms, 51.2 ms, and 0.39 ms. So the honest range is 6×, BookPress against WordPress's best case, a warm cache on an anonymous repeat visit, up to about 150× against anything the cache can't help: first visits, search, logged-in pages, any dynamic page. No caching tricks on the BookPress side, because it doesn't need any. The benchmark setup is published.
Common functionality (SEO, forms, utility plugins) is being reimplemented natively, and supported stacks are validated plugin by plugin. The free compatibility scan reports exactly which of your plugins are covered before any migration happens. Heavily custom PHP is out of scope initially, and we'll tell you so up front.
You install a temporary plugin on your existing WordPress site. It runs a free compatibility scan, then streams your database, uploads, and theme across. URLs and domains are preserved, and existing passwords keep working. Only sites that pass the scan cleanly are accepted. If yours doesn't, nothing changes for you.
The economics follow from the engineering: an idle site costs almost nothing to keep online, so hosting it can cost almost nothing too. For agencies and hosts, wholesale pricing lands around €1–3 per site per month. More for agencies →
BookPress is in active development, with early access opening for agencies managing portfolios of brochure sites. Tell us about your stack.
hello@bookpress.io