WordPress map plugins tested: page weight and privacy
We put the same map, five places in Berlin at 645 × 450 pixels, on a page with eight popular WordPress map plugins and measured what a visitor’s browser has to load. One of them is ours, Map Studio, so here is exactly how we measured, and the numbers as they came out.
- Map in view: the lightest pages came from WP Store Locator (321 KB, its map shares the space with a list) and Leaflet Map (497 KB). The heaviest was WP Go Maps (1,009 KB).
- Map further down the page: only WP Map Block and Map Studio wait until the map comes into view. All others load everything at once.
- Pages without a map: WP Maps loads 584 KB of scripts on every page of the site. The others add nothing, or very little.
- Privacy: no plugin set a cookie. Every map contacts a tile server as soon as it loads; WP Go Maps and Leaflet Map also load their scripts from unpkg.com.
Page weight with the map in view
How much a visitor’s browser downloads when the map is at the top of the page: everything together, compressed. The same page without any map plugin weighs 90 KB.
Page weight, map in view (KB, less is better)
When the map is further down
Many maps sit at the end of a contact or store page. Here the map is 2,400 pixels down, and the page is not scrolled. A plugin that waits only loads the map when a visitor gets there.
Page weight, map further down and not yet seen (KB)
All numbers
| Plugin | Map in view | Map further down | Page without a map | JavaScript | Requests | Map type | Other servers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WP Store Locator 3.1.1 | 321 KB | 321 KB | 90 KB | 172 KB | 34 | image tiles | tile.openstreetmap.org |
| Leaflet Map 3.4.7 | 497 KB | 497 KB | 90 KB | 66 KB | 20 | image tiles | tile.openstreetmap.org, unpkg.com |
| Map Studio 0.5.1 | 574 KB | 145 KB | 90 KB | 339 KB | 17 | vector map | tiles.openfreemap.org |
| WP Map Block 3.2.1 | 676 KB | 108 KB | 90 KB | 238 KB | 20 | image tiles | tile.openstreetmap.org |
| MapPress 2.97.17 | 701 KB | 701 KB | 111 KB | 411 KB | 29 | vector map | tiles.openfreemap.org |
| OSM – OpenStreetMap 6.2.6 | 753 KB | 753 KB | 90 KB | 319 KB | 27 | image tiles | tile.openstreetmap.org |
| WP Maps 5.0.3 | 878 KB | 878 KB | 674 KB | 585 KB | 25 | vector map | tiles.openfreemap.org |
| WP Go Maps 10.1.10 | 1,009 KB | 1,009 KB | 90 KB | 540 KB | 41 | image tiles | tile.openstreetmap.org, unpkg.com |
Measured on 11 November 2026, median of three runs (the runs differed by less than 1 KB). “Page without a map” is another page of the same site with the plugin active. Map Studio is measured in version 0.5.1, which loads one font file less than 0.5.0 (621 KB with the map in view).
What the numbers mean
Image tiles or vector map. Leaflet Map, OSM, WP Store Locator, WP Map Block and WP Go Maps (with its Leaflet engine) show ready-made image tiles. They need little code, and for a small map they are light. WP Maps, MapPress and Map Studio draw a vector map with MapLibre: the library is larger, but the map stays sharp on every screen, can be rotated and tilted, and its colours can be changed.
Loading only when needed makes the biggest difference for maps lower on a page. Most visitors of a contact page never scroll to the map, and with WP Map Block or Map Studio they then download almost nothing for it.
Scripts on every page are worth checking. A plugin that loads its map code on pages without a map makes the whole site slower, not just the map page.
Other servers. As soon as a map loads, the visitor’s browser fetches map tiles from a tile server and passes on its IP address. In the EU that usually means asking for consent first, or loading the map only after a click. Several plugins can do this, but in our test none had it on by default. The OpenStreetMap tile server (tile.openstreetmap.org) runs on donations and is meant for light use; busy sites are asked to use another tile provider. See also Google Maps and the GDPR.
How we measured
- A fresh WordPress 7.1.4 with the Twenty Twenty-Five theme, PHP 8.5. Only the plugin under test was active.
- Each plugin’s defaults, with a map service that needs no API key: WP Go Maps with its Leaflet engine, WP Maps with OpenStreetMap as source. Everything else as it comes.
- The same map everywhere: five places in Berlin, 645 × 450 pixels, a similar view. The plugins’ current versions from WordPress.org, listed in the table.
- Headless Chrome with a 1,280 × 900 window, a fresh profile and an empty cache for every run, waiting until the network was quiet.
- Files from the test site were counted gzip-compressed, as a normal web server sends them; files from other servers as they arrived.
- We do not report load times: the test site ran on a local test server, so times would say more about it than about the plugins.
Map Studio is our own plugin. We measured it exactly like the others and publish the numbers as they came out. If you develop one of these plugins and know a setting we should have used, write to us and we will measure again.
Try Map Studio – free
A vector map that loads only when it is seen. No account, no API key.