Problem:
If you're experiencing slow site performance when the Advanced Custom Fields Multilingual plugin is activated, it might be due to the high number of ACF field calls. In a case we investigated, activating WPML increased the load time significantly because it hooked into each ACF field call for translation, executing over 8000 times.
Solution:
To address this, we recommend two strategies:
1. Reduce the number of ACF field calls by modifying the theme to minimize usage of
, especially for fields that don't require translation. Replace these with direct
calls to bypass both WPML and ACF retrieval logic.
2. Use a filter introduced in ACFML 2.1.4 to bypass translation logic. Add the following code to your theme's
or as a drop-in plugin:
add_filter( 'acfml_should_translate_acf_entity', function( $should, $field, $context ) {<br /> $should = false;<br /> static $customfield_settings;<br /> if ( ! is_array( $customfield_settings ) ) {<br /> $icl_sitepress_settings = get_option( 'icl_sitepress_settings' );<br /> $customfield_settings = $icl_sitepress_settings['translation-management']['custom_fields_translation'];<br /> }<br /> if ( $context === 'field' ) {<br /> $field_name = $field['name'];<br /> if ( isset( $customfield_settings[$field_name] ) && $customfield_settings[$field_name] === WPML_TRANSLATE_CUSTOM_FIELD ) {<br /> $should = true;<br /> }<br /> }<br /> return $should;<br />}, 10, 3 );This code ensures that only fields marked for translation are processed, significantly improving performance.
Update
ACFML 2.2.0 (released February 2026) includes performance improvements that significantly reduce this type of overhead. The plugin no longer processes backend-only labels or makes unnecessary database calls when nothing has changed. Sites with heavy ACF usage should see improvement after updating. The acfml_should_translate_acf_entity filter mentioned in this thread remains available for further tuning if needed.
