Delete Expired Transients

79 Quality Score

Active Installs

17/30

Popularity scores 55/30, reflecting a modest install base of roughly 5,000 active sites, which is solid for a single-purpose utility but small compared to general caching plugins with millions of installs.

Update Freshness

25/25

Maintenance scores a perfect 100/25, driven by a fresh update timestamp from May 2026 and a tested-with header that targets the current WordPress 7.0 release.

User Rating

15/15

User ratings are 100/15 based on 13 perfect 5-star reviews, which is encouraging but represents a very small sample size that may not reflect broader sentiment.

Support Health

8/15

Support health lands at 50/15 because there are zero support threads, meaning there is no public track record of how the author responds to bug reports or compatibility questions.

WP Compatibility

15/15

Compatibility scores 100/15, with a tested-with header for WordPress 7.0 and a minimum requirement of WordPress 3.7 and PHP 5.3, making it usable on essentially any modern or older installation.

Scores higher than 72% of indexed plugins

About

Delete old, expired transients from WordPress wp_options table

Active Installs 5k+

Rating ★★★★★ 5/5

Last Updated 2026-05-12 4:55am GMT

Requires WordPress 3.7+

Tested Up To 7.0.4

Requires PHP 5.3+

✓ No known vulnerabilities

What It Does

Delete Expired Transients scans your WordPress wp_options table and removes transient records that have passed their expiration date. Transients are temporary cached data stored by WordPress core, themes, and plugins, and leftover entries can accumulate over time. Running this plugin helps shrink the wp_options table and can speed up queries that scan it.

Who It's For

This plugin is best suited for site administrators on high-traffic or long-running WordPress installations where the wp_options table has grown large due to abandoned transients. It is also a good fit for users on hosting plans with storage or database size limits, or anyone who runs many caching and form plugins that create lots of short-lived transients.

Who Should Skip It

If you already use a database optimization plugin like WP-Optimize that includes transient cleanup as one of its features, adding this standalone plugin is redundant. Owners of small or new sites with under a few thousand posts are unlikely to see measurable benefit and can skip it.

The Bottom Line

Delete Expired Transients is a narrow, well-maintained utility that does one specific job, deleting stale transients, and it does that job with a perfect maintenance score and clean compatibility. Its small user base of 5,000 installs and limited public support history mean it is best treated as a complement to, not a replacement for, broader caching or database tools. If you already run WP-Optimize or a comparable suite, skip it; otherwise it is a low-risk addition for sites struggling with bloated wp_options tables.

Pick this instead if your performance problem is front-end page delivery and you want to push caching to the Cloudflare edge rather than clean up server-side database bloat.

WP-Optimize – Cache, Compress images, Minify & Clean database to boost page speed & performance 89/100

Choose WP-Optimize if you want transient cleanup bundled with image compression, full page caching, and broader database optimisation in a single, well-supported plugin with over 1 million installs.

WP Fastest Cache – WordPress Cache Plugin 89/100

Go with WP Fastest Cache if your primary goal is static page caching and you would rather rely on its built-in database tools than install a separate transient cleaner.

WP Super Cache 87/100

Pick WP Super Cache if you want a battle-tested page caching solution from the WordPress.com Automattic team and you do not need a dedicated transient-only utility.

SpeedyCache – Cache, Optimization, Performance 87/100

Choose SpeedyCache if you want an all-in-one performance suite that combines page caching, asset optimization, and database cleanup, which may make a standalone transient plugin unnecessary.