Skip to content Skip to sidebar

This is the technical support forum for WPML - the multilingual WordPress plugin.

Everyone can read, but only WPML clients can post here. WPML team is replying on the forum 6 days per week, 22 hours per day.

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
- 8:00 – 15:00 8:00 – 15:00 8:00 – 15:00 8:00 – 15:00 8:00 – 15:00 -
- 16:00 – 17:00 16:00 – 17:00 16:00 – 17:00 16:00 – 17:00 16:00 – 17:00 -

Supporter timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)

This topic contains 6 replies, has 0 voices.

Last updated by Christopher Amirian 9 hours, 34 minutes ago.

Assisted by: Alejandro.

Author Posts
October 1, 2025 at 6:12 am #17447157

yvesB-21

Background of the issue:
I am trying to manage my WordPress site and noticed that WPML tables in the database are greater than 3 GB. I need someone to look into this issue.

Symptoms:
The WPML tables in the database are unexpectedly large, exceeding 3 GB.

Questions:
Why are the WPML tables so large?
How can I reduce the size of the WPML tables?

October 1, 2025 at 2:14 pm #17449137

Alejandro
WPML Supporter since 02/2018

Languages: English (English ) Spanish (Español ) Italian (Italiano )

Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)

Hello,

Please check this video out: hidden link

The reason why everything is so big is because you already had a big database, then you added WooCommerce and a Page builder on top of it.

These plugins have a LOT of things that are added to the database that need to be checked for translations or that actually contain translations, so naturally that will "encapsulate" the results into a handful of our tables making it look enormous.

If you check the post and metadata tables alone you'll see they are like 3 times our tables, and that means that in general you'll need 11x the content from those 2 tables alone since they need to be available for each language that you have.

I checked many things and I think that by deleting orphan content and maybe reducing the tables when you can, WPML's table will eventually shrink as well 🙂

In the video I give you a few tips that are not WPML related but that could help you get a leaner database.

Regards.

October 7, 2025 at 8:46 am #17462682

yvesB-21

Hello, i am still optimizing the database. i did reduce and also remove many tables. Still working on it

October 7, 2025 at 2:27 pm #17464184

Alejandro
WPML Supporter since 02/2018

Languages: English (English ) Spanish (Español ) Italian (Italiano )

Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)

Awesome!

Let us know how it goes. I suspect that after the tables have been optimized we might have to do something to reduce ours as well, but please do let us know when the others are ok and what's the status then so we can understand what to do next.

Regards,

October 13, 2025 at 9:08 am #17478853

Christopher Amirian
WPML Supporter since 07/2020

Languages: English (English )

Timezone: Asia/Yerevan (GMT+04:00)

Hi Yves,

This is Christopher from WPML support. I wonder if you managed to optimize your website database tables as per your latest reply?

We are in waiting mode to see what is the result to be able to check here.

Thanks.

October 23, 2025 at 7:58 am #17511237

Christopher Amirian
WPML Supporter since 07/2020

Languages: English (English )

Timezone: Asia/Yerevan (GMT+04:00)

Hi Yves,

This is another reminder that we are here in waiting mode for an action from your side.

We will be happy to continue our investigation as soon as you have updates for us.

Thanks.

October 29, 2025 at 12:49 pm #17529441

Christopher Amirian
WPML Supporter since 07/2020

Languages: English (English )

Timezone: Asia/Yerevan (GMT+04:00)

Hi Yves,

This is the third and last reminder for an answer on this ticket.

As we were actively working on this issue, and now the job is blocked and needs your attention.

I'd appreciate it if we can have an answer here. We will consider the issue as closed if we do not get timely reply.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.