WooCommerce Hosting Requirements Calculator

Estimated PHP memory, PHP workers and disk space from your catalog size and traffic, built up from WooCommerce's own documented minimums.

Your numbers

Products in your catalog

products

Orders per month

orders

Shoppers on the site at your busiest moment

A rough guess is fine: a sale-day spike, not your average.

Active plugins and extensions

Heavy theme or page builder (Elementor, Divi, WPBakery...)

Full-page caching is set up (Cloudflare, a cache plugin, or your host's own)

Cached, logged-out browsing barely touches PHP. Cart, checkout and account pages still do, since they're personal to each shopper.

Your result · updates as you type

Suggested PHP memory limit

320M

WooCommerce's own documented minimum is 256M; this estimate scales up from there for your catalog size, plugin count. Set WP_MEMORY_LIMIT to this and WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT to at least double it.

PHP workers (PHP-FPM processes): 4
Estimated database size: 88 MB
Estimated media storage: 293 MB

With a full-page cache in front, most of your traffic never reaches PHP, which is why the worker count here is modest. Make sure cart, checkout, my-account and the Store API stay uncached (see the cache rules generator).

Breakdown

PHP memory limit (WP_MEMORY_LIMIT): 320M
Max memory limit for admin tasks (WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT): 640M
PHP workers to handle your peak: 4
Recommended disk space (database + media, with room to grow): 2 GB
PHP version: 8.3 or newer (tested to 8.4)
Database: MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.6+

One hard number, and a planning estimate on top

WooCommerce publishes one clear, hard minimum: 256 MB of WordPress memory limit, on PHP 8.3 or newer with MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.6+. There's no official formula beyond that for exactly how much memory, how many PHP workers, or how much disk a specific store needs, since it genuinely depends on your plugins, theme and traffic pattern. This calculator scales up from that documented floor using your catalog size, plugin count and peak traffic as a planning estimate, not a guarantee.

The PHP worker estimate assumes a full-page cache is handling most anonymous, logged-out browsing (which is the majority of traffic on most stores), so it mainly sizes for the personal pages a cache can't serve: cart, checkout and my-account.

Using the numbers

Take the memory and worker figures to your host as a starting conversation, not a firm spec: a managed WooCommerce host will usually load-test the real number for you.
If you don't have a full-page cache set up yet, turn that toggle off first: it's usually the single cheapest capacity win available, often bigger than any hosting upgrade.
Re-run this after a big catalog import or before a known traffic spike (a sale, a press mention), not just once at launch.

Questions people ask

Is 256 MB really enough?

It's WooCommerce's documented minimum, but most real stores with more than a handful of plugins need more in practice. Treat 256 MB as a floor, not a target.

What's a PHP worker?

One PHP-FPM process capable of handling one request at a time. If you have fewer workers than simultaneous logged-in/cart/checkout requests, extra visitors queue and the site feels slow, even if the server isn't otherwise overloaded.

Why does turning off full-page caching change the worker estimate so much?

Without a cache, every single page view (including anonymous browsing) runs PHP and WordPress's full stack. With one, only personal pages like cart and checkout do, which is a much smaller share of total traffic.

Does this account for a traffic spike from ads or a sale?

Only as far as you set "peak concurrent shoppers" to reflect it. Set that field to your expected spike, not your average day, if you're planning for a launch or sale.

Last reviewed 30 September 2026.

Sources: WooCommerce: Server Requirements