Load Time Test
Measure website loading time, TTFB and response performance.
Load time grade A to D: what the performance thresholds mean
Grade A means TTFB under 200ms and load time under 1 second. Grade D means your server is slow enough to cause measurable user abandonment and SEO impact.
The grade scale reflects real-world user behavior thresholds from Google and web performance research. Under 200ms TTFB: imperceptible to users, excellent server performance. 200-600ms: acceptable, no meaningful impact. 600ms-1s: noticeable, mobile users begin to drop off. Above 1s TTFB: significant abandonment risk, especially on 4G/5G connections where users expect sub-second responses. Improving from D to A is almost always a combination of CDN implementation, server-side caching, and response size reduction.
TTFB is the server's job — total load time is everyone's job
TTFB reflects server response speed. Total load time includes TTFB plus content download. Optimizing them requires different teams and different tools.
A fast TTFB (under 200ms) with a slow total load time means the server is fine but content delivery is the problem: large page weight, uncompressed assets, or too many requests. A slow TTFB (above 600ms) with a fast total load time is unusual but can indicate efficient but slow database queries — the server takes time to process but the response itself is small. Each metric diagnoses a different layer: TTFB → backend (hosting, CDN, DB); total load time → frontend (asset optimization, request count, compression).
How redirects silently add hundreds of milliseconds
Each redirect is a full HTTP roundtrip. A chain of 3 redirects adds 300-600ms before any content starts loading.
HTTP → HTTPS → www → canonical URL is a 3-hop redirect chain that adds 300-600ms on a typical network before the first byte of actual content is served. Every redirect requires a new DNS lookup, TCP connection, and HTTP request. The fix is almost always to update links and canonical URLs to skip intermediate redirects. If this test shows more than 1 redirect for your homepage URL, audit your redirect chain — it's free performance waiting to be claimed.
Page size and load time: the direct relationship most teams underestimate
A 4MB page takes 4× longer to download than a 1MB page on the same connection, regardless of server speed or CDN placement.
On a typical 20Mbps broadband connection, 1MB of content takes approximately 400ms to download. A 3MB page adds 1.2 seconds of pure transfer time on top of TTFB. On 4G mobile (typical 12Mbps), that same 3MB page takes 2 seconds just for transfer. Image optimization (WebP/AVIF, lazy loading, responsive images), JavaScript tree-shaking, and CSS purging are the fastest path to meaningful page size reduction. Use this test as your before/after benchmark when optimizing asset pipelines.