How to Check Your Website Speed for Free (and What to Fix First)

A slow website loses visitors, and most owners never find out because the site feels fine on their own fast computer. The good news is that checking speed is free and takes five minutes, and the fixes that matter most are usually the same few things. This guide shows you how to test, how to read the results without jargon, and what to fix first.

Step 1: Test from the right place

Your own experience is a poor test. Your browser has cached your site and your connection is probably good. Test the way a new visitor would.

1. Open the Website Speed Test.
2. Enter your home page address, including https://.
3. Run the test and wait for the result.

Then test again for the pages that earn you money: a product page, your booking page or your contact page. A fast home page tells you little about a slow checkout.

If you are in one country and most customers are in another, also test from their region. How to test your website from another country explains how.

Step 2: Read the numbers in plain language

Speed reports contain many numbers. These are the ones that matter, with what they mean for a visitor.

• Time to first byte (TTFB). How long the server takes to start answering. If this is high, the problem is the server, not your images. A common rule of thumb from Google's web.dev guidance is to aim for 0.8 seconds or less, though your results will vary with where the visitor is.
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). How long until the biggest thing on the screen (usually a hero image or headline) appears. Google considers 2.5 seconds or less "good."
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP). How quickly the page reacts when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). How much the page jumps around while loading. Good is 0.1 or less.
• Page weight. The total download size of the page. Heavy pages are slow on mobile data.
• Number of requests. How many separate files the page loads. Many requests, especially to other companies' servers, slow things down.

LCP, INP and CLS are together called Core Web Vitals. They are the measurements Google uses to judge page experience. You can see them for your site with the Core Web Vitals tool, and the Core Web Vitals guide explains each one in more depth. Thresholds can be updated, so check Google's current documentation if you need exact values.

Step 3: Find out what is making the page heavy

Run the Page Weight Analyzer on the same page. It breaks the page into images, scripts, fonts, styles and other files, and shows the largest items.

Look at the list from the top. In most small-business sites, the biggest problem is one of these:

1. Oversized images. A photo straight from a phone camera can be several megabytes. Visitors on a phone only need a fraction of that.
2. Too many scripts. Chat widgets, analytics, tracking pixels, booking widgets and social feeds each add files.
3. Too many fonts. Each font weight is another download.
4. A large video that autoplays. It can dwarf everything else on the page.

Step 4: Fix the biggest problem first

Work in this order, because earlier fixes usually give the largest improvement for the least effort.

Fix 1: Shrink your images

Images are the most common cause of slow pages.

1. Resize images to the size they are displayed. A banner shown 1200 pixels wide does not need a 5000 pixel original.
2. Compress them. Free tools such as Squoosh (from Google) let you do this in a browser.
3. Use modern formats such as WebP or AVIF where your platform supports them. See image optimization with WebP and AVIF.
4. Lazy load images below the first screen. Most website builders and WordPress have a setting for this. Do not lazy load your main hero image, since that delays LCP.

Fix 2: Remove scripts you do not need

Open the Third-Party Script Checker to see which outside services your page calls. For each one, ask: does this earn its place? An old tracking pixel, a retired chat widget or a second analytics tool can be removed without anyone noticing. Fewer scripts means faster, simpler pages.

Fix 3: Turn on caching and a CDN

Caching keeps a ready-made copy of your page so the server does not rebuild it for every visitor. A CDN (content delivery network) keeps copies of your files close to visitors around the world. Check whether you already use one with the CDN Detector. If not, read CDN explained. If you use WordPress, the WordPress slow site speed checklist lists caching plugins and settings, and Shopify owners can use the Shopify store speed guide.

Fix 4: Check compression and modern protocols

Your server should compress text files (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) with gzip or Brotli. Use the HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 Checker to see which protocol your site uses. Modern protocols load many files more efficiently. Most good hosts enable them by default, so if yours does not, that is worth raising with them. Learn more in HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 explained.

Fix 5: Look at the server itself

If TTFB is high even after caching, the server is the bottleneck. Common causes include an overloaded shared hosting plan, a slow database, or a heavy plugin. The guides on reducing time to first byte and diagnosing a slow website go through the checks in order. If you suspect the hosting plan itself, see VPS vs shared hosting reliability.

Step 5: Test again and keep a record

After each change, retest the same page with the same tool. Change one thing at a time so you know what helped. Write down the date and the main numbers, such as TTFB, LCP and page weight, in a simple note or spreadsheet. A change that makes the lab number worse is easy to undo if you know the last good state.

Step 6: Watch speed over time

Speed gets worse slowly. A new plugin, a larger banner or a marketing script can undo your work. Add a monthly speed test to your website owner monthly health checklist. You can also use the free uptime monitor to track response time on your key pages and alert you if a page becomes very slow or stops responding. Free monitoring includes 3 monitors with 5-minute checks.

Common mistakes

• Chasing a perfect score. A score of 100 is not the goal. Aim for pages that load quickly for real visitors on mid-range phones.
• Testing only the home page. Your slowest page is often a gallery, a category page or the checkout.
• Installing five speed plugins. Overlapping optimization plugins can break your site. Use one well-regarded tool and test.
• Ignoring mobile. Most visitors come on phones, which have less processing power than your office computer.
• Fixing speed with a bigger server when the real issue is a 4 MB image. Check page weight first, since it is cheaper to fix.

When to call your host or developer

• TTFB stays high even with caching on. The server, database or PHP configuration may need tuning.
• Your host does not support HTTP/2, modern PHP versions or Brotli or gzip compression.
• The speed test shows large render-blocking scripts or CSS from your theme, which usually needs a developer to defer or trim.
• You are on a plan that limits CPU or memory and the site slows at busy times. Ask whether your account hit a resource limit.
• You are comparing hosting plans and want advice on moving. Read migrate a website without downtime first.

Next steps

• Website Speed Test to measure your pages now
• Page Weight Analyzer to find the heaviest files
• Core Web Vitals guide
• Reduce time to first byte
• Website down? Start with the first 15 minutes checklist

FAQ

What is a good load time for a small business website?

Aim for the main content to appear in about 2.5 seconds or less on a mobile connection, which matches Google's "good" threshold for LCP. Faster is better, but diminishing returns set in.

Why does my site feel fast but the test says slow?

Your browser has cached files and you are probably near the server. A test from a clean start in a different location shows what a first-time visitor sees.

Do I need a CDN?

If your visitors are spread across regions, a CDN usually helps. If almost all of them are near your server, the benefit is smaller, though many CDNs also add protection and caching.

Does site speed affect Google rankings?

Google has said page experience is one of many ranking signals, and a very slow site also loses visitors directly. Treat speed as a usability fix first and a ranking bonus second.

This page is general information written by our editorial team and updated when documentation changes. Servers and providers differ, so test changes safely first. See our editorial policy and disclaimer.