The online world continues to advance by leaps and bounds, the main search engines are saturated with content and among so many web pages, the Google algorithm has infinite resources to position our site. And do you know which one of them it is? Exactly! Today we analyse more than 20 tools to measure the loading speed of your web page .
+20 Tools to Measure the Loading Speed of Your Website
These are the tools that you should have scheduled to optimise your website in alphabetical order. Remember that we constantly update the rankings, so if you know of any other tool that is not included in the list, we are waiting for your comment at the end of the note to be able to add it ;).
Batch Speed
Batch Speed is a free tool (up to 500 URLs) created by the English developer Jon Elliot, which uses the Google page speed checker (Lighthouse) to measure the loading speed of websites, sitemaps or lists of URLs. Once the analysis is done, it allows you to export the results in CVS format and track performance improvements for your website or see the evolution of competitors.
It distinguishes between the loading speed on desktop PC and mobile phone, and offers a list of suggestions for improvement.
CA App Synthetic Monitor (from Broadcom)
CA App Synthetic Monitor is the successor to the web app loads.in . Suitable for web page managers, developers and web designers, the tool offers the possibility to check the speed of web pages from 84 monitoring stations distributed in 42 countries.
The tool includes features such as Smart reports, analytics and alerts, script monitoring, and real browser monitoring. It also has a powerful API that integrates with your enterprise APM solution. It requires no software installation and offers a 30-day free trial.
Dareboost, by Contentsquare
It is a tool that stands out for its graphic part. It displays information on more than a hundred aspects of your web page and with its Real Browser Testing service (based on Google Chrome) it allows you to run configurable tests (being able to choose from screen resolution to bandwidth) that show results in graphs of easy reading.
Among the points detected by the tool are the loading time, page size, server requirements, W3 validation with errors in HTML and CSS, and the technologies used (such as avatar, WordPress, PHP , etc.). In addition, it allows you to view the test in a video that shows each step of the page load.
You can request a free trial, but the prices of the service are not available on the web.
Dotcom-Tools by Dotcom-Monitor
This tool allows you to check your website speed across browsers and mobile devices (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, iOS, and Android) for free from up to three locations around the world. The results are dumped into performance reports and waterfall charts. It detects slow or missing elements, page errors, and features Lighthouse Reports, which include performance metrics, accessibility, best practises, and SEO page improvement recommendations .
You can receive alerts with detailed reports when pages are slow to load or when errors occur. It also offers LoadView, a cloud-based load testing solution.
It has a free plan with up to 250 tests per month and two payment plans of €8.64 and €25.95 per month, billed annually. You can try them for free for 30 days.
Geekflare
It is one of the most complete tools on the list. Not only does it analyse the loading time of your website, but it also offers SEO, DNS, hosting, security and performance analysis, among others . In total, there are more than 25 tools and more than 50 SEO metrics that can be analysed from a desktop or mobile device.
The test includes three types of speed tests: overall load time, time to first byte (TTFB), and the time from when the page starts to load until any part of the page content is rendered on the screen ( First Contentful Paint, or FCP), among various other performance metrics.
Once the results are in, a detailed diagnostic breakdown is generated with all the important things to consider explained in a simple way. It also offers recommendations for improvement.
GiftOfSpeed
This software offers several free-to-use tools that help detect problems that slow down your website loading : CSS, Javascript and image optimization test, caching and broken request test, HTTP request checker, among others. It also offers solutions such as CSS and javascript compressor, image compressor (PNG and JPG), CSS Sprites generator, line break remover and Base64 encoder.
GiftOfSpeed’s limitation is that the 6 available locations from which you can measure the performance of your website do not include Spain. It has an optimization service for your site, improving the loading speed in 3 or more seconds. The budget will depend on the result of your previous audit of the website you want to improve.
Google Analytics
It is probably the -or one of the- best-known tools to measure the web speed of your site, in addition to a set of factors that show an x-ray of user behaviour and page performance. To use this tool, you must configure its code within your website. Within the platform you will see information about the average loading time of your website, average redirect time, average domain search time, average server connection time, average server response time and average page download time.
What it does not offer are recommendations on how to improve the identified problems. To do this, you can complement this tool with PageSpeed Insights.
GT Metrix
Compared to other developer tools, GT Metrix is quite easy to use and the beginner can get the hang of it quite quickly. It uses a combination of Google PageSpeed Insights and YSlow to generate scores and recommendations.
It has a free version with which you can analyse the performance of your website from 7 different locations (the premium plan includes 15 more). Measure key metrics that are displayed in 4 interactive graphs: web vitals, page timings, page size & request counts, and performance/structure scores. You can choose a specific date range, make annotations, create custom alerts, and track daily, weekly, or monthly to ensure optimal performance.
It allows you to test the page on an Android device or simulate its operation on up to 20 different mobile devices and modify the screen resolution. It displays your web load analytics like a filmstrip so you can see load frame by frame in real time and more easily identify failures.
Payment solutions are divided between individuals/professionals and business/teams. Prices vary between €8.66/month and €368/month, with annual billing.
HTTP Archive
HTTP Archive is a free tool that tracks how a given website is built by providing historical data about it. Like Lighthouse, it is limited to the analysis of data identified in the main pages of the websites (it does not do a comprehensive tracking of the rest of the internal pages).
Its mechanics are simple: you must enter the URL or website of any company in its search engine, and you will obtain all kinds of information about its performance (loading speed by type of content, page speed score, cache usage, etc.).
On the other hand, the tool periodically tracks the main web sites, recording detailed information about the resources obtained, the APIs and functions of the platform used, and the execution traces of each page. It then processes and analyzes this data to identify trends that you can freely view and download with Google BigQuery.
K6 (ex-Load Impact)
K6 is an open source, developer-focused load testing tool that enables you to efficiently create and run performance tests to detect and fix problems early, ensuring applications that are scalable and resilient to failure.
K6 users are typically developers, QA engineers, and DevOps, who use the software to test the performance of APIs, microservices, and websites. Among the functions that this tool has, stand out the load test (it is optimised for a minimum consumption of system resources and designed to run tests with high load) and performance monitoring (run tests with a small amount of load to continuously monitor the performance and availability of your production environment).
Although it is a very good option for experienced users, it is not recommended for those looking for something simple. It offers up to 50 free trials and then has 3 annual plans that range from €51/month to €968/month.
New Relic
Like K6, this cloud-based platform is intended to help businesses build software that improves web uptime and performance, giving the product greater scale and efficiency.
It is intended for developers, engineers, and operators to clearly see the software environment, find and fix problems faster, build high-performing DevOps teams, and improve the customer experience.
It offers specific solutions for eCommerces since by partnering with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services , the system helps reduce risk, increase stability and optimise spending in the cloud with real-time visibility.
It has a free plan for life and three payment options (prices are not available on the web).
Nibbler (from Silktide)
Nibbler is a free tool (limited to 3 reports per month) to analyse 10 key areas of any website, including accessibility, SEO, integration with social networks and the technology used .
Provides a detailed report of the results and gives a score from 0 to 10 that summarises important aspects that your website must meet to improve performance. All you have to do is go to the Nibbler website, type in the URL of your page and wait for the results.
Something very important to keep in mind is that Nibbler is a bot, that is, an automated computer program that tries to find web pages by looking at the first one and following the links from that to other pages. If your website doesn’t link pages together in a way that a bot can see, then the tool won’t be able to fully explore it.
Page Speed Insights
Google Pagespeed Insights is a free, easy and intuitive tool that will quickly tell us the speed of our web page both on mobile devices and on desktop and will give us several improvement options in case our site has faults or has room for improvement. optimization.
The analysis includes data from the Chrome User Experience (CrUX) report to show information on the real performance of the pages, and shows two metrics, belonging to Google’s Core Web Vitals : First Contentful Paint (FCP) and DOMContentLoaded (DCL). The tool scores the website’s performance from 0 to 100 compared to the average, roughly calculates the room for performance improvement, and offers best practice tips to achieve it.
Pingdom Tool
Another of the key tools to measure the loading speed of our website. It is similar to GTMetrix and just as complete. Pingdom Tool provides us with information about the server’s response codes, the type of content (CSS, HTML, JavaScript) and, as its main feature, includes data on loading time, page size and the number of requests.
It offers two subscription plans, one that monitors synthetically and one that tests real users. Either of the two starts at €8.33/month. You can also order a custom solution and add specific metrics to the measurement.
Site Speed Checker (from Seomastering)
Site Speed Checker by Seomastering is a good option when you want to test multiple URLs simultaneously, as it allows you to enter batches of up to 10 URLs to see how each one performs and compare them to each other. In addition, you can record the data for the next week, month or year to see the evolution of the speed of your website as you implement the corresponding improvements.
It is free, it works online and is complemented by other free Seomastering tools that analyse and propose SEO improvements of all kinds. Simply enter your site address into a form and click “Analyse.” In less than 30 seconds, you will receive a detailed report with the results of the audit.
Test my site (from Think with Google)
In addition to PageSpeed Insights, Google has also created a mobile-specific web speed test. Once you enter your domain, Test my site by Google will analyse the performance of your website using the Chrome browser and give you access to a complete report that includes recommendations and adjustments that you can make to reduce the load time.
Uptrends
This platform offers several free tools, including performance (desktop and mobile website speed test, and CDN performance check), performance monitoring and timing, and DNS reporting.
It also has specific payment solutions, which adapt to all company sizes: monitoring of real users, performance of each page, loading time depending on the country, the type of device and the software used, management of expenses in the cloud , automated tests to see how users experience your website, among many others.
Like GiftOfSpeed, it offers to analyse your website from 11 different locations, but none of them includes Spain . It has 3 basic and 2 advanced subscription plans that range from €13.37/month to €44.60/month (advanced plans are customizable and you pay for what you need). Includes a 30-day free trial.
Web Page Analyzer (from Web Site Optimization)
It is a completely free, basic and easy-to-use tool that tests the loading speed of any website. You just have to enter the URL of the site and the system calculates the size of the page, the composition and the download time. Based on these features, the script offers tips to improve times and shows the latest practises of website optimization secrets, page size guidelines and trends, and optimization techniques.
It also has other paid services, such as conversion rate increase , qualified traffic generation, multivariate adaptive tests, accessibility analysis, among many others.
Web Page Test (from Catchpoint)
WebPageTest is a free tool that allows you to run speed tests from multiple locations (Spain is not included) , using real consumer speeds and browsers from both PCs and 4G mobile devices. It also provides diagnostic information including charts, optimizations and improvements, and allows you to compare different URLs.
In September 2020, the software was acquired by Catchpoint, the platform specialised in digital experience monitoring, improving the scope of its functions. The WebPageTest code is free to use under the Polyform Shield licence, an open source licence that can be modified for personal use or to create non-competing commercial products from it.
WooRank
WooRank is one of the simplest and most complete tools to analyse the loading speed of your website, as well as many other aspects of the health of the page . Provides an instant overview of how your site scores based on SEO best practises and shows how it ranks against the competition in your industry.
It also has keyword analysis, monitoring and evaluation of your competitors, usability and accessibility of your page, and many other factors related to web performance. Their solutions are divided by industry: developers, agencies, small businesses, marketing and sales teams, and data services.
It has 3 subscription plans: Pro (€79.99/month), Premium (€199.99/month) and Business (custom). You can try it for free.
Yslow
Yslow is a plugin for your browser (compatible with Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox and other free sources) that rates a web page based on 34 optimization rules. It offers suggestions for improving page performance, summarises components, displays page statistics, and provides tools for performance analysis, including Smush.it and JSLint.
Among its solutions, it has content optimization (reducing HTTP calls and DNS lookups, avoiding redirects, etc.), server optimization, cookies, images and mobiles.
As you can see, this is our selection but… what other tools to measure the loading speed do you know? Which one is your favourite? Do you want to recommend some to us? we read you
Why is it Important to Measure the Loading Speed of Your Website?
We could mention several reasons, but we mainly highlight two:
1. It is Basic for SEO
Search engines like Google, Yahoo! or Bing take into account the time it takes for your website to fully load. Therefore, if we want to have our page 100% optimised from the SEO point of view, we will need to measure the loading speed of our web page and in case of obtaining a lousy or improvable loading speed, we must take urgent measures.
In this way, the loading speed of our website will directly affect the positioning of our site in the main search engines, being able to improve and climb positions simply by improving this factor.
2. It Affects the User Experience
Can you imagine that the Amazon website took 3 seconds to load a product page? Or that Facebook took 3 seconds to load a profile?
Although it may seem like a very short time, it really takes a few milliseconds for a category website like the ones mentioned above to display its contents because if they did not do so, that extra time would result in loss of active users and loss of income.
Therefore, if we want to give our users the best, we will have to take a look at the loading speed of our website, which is almost mandatory.
Factors that Influence the Loading Speed of Your Website
Likewise, when analysing the factors that influence the loading speed of our web page, we could cite several, but really considering reality, we could summarise them in three.
First of all, and the most important factor, is the hosting that we use. When we talk about quality hosting, we are talking about a server that optimises response time, processors, RAM, operating system… etc.
The place where we will locate our server will therefore be a determining factor when it comes to achieving a website with optimal loading speed that favours our search engine positioning and user experience.
The network is another factor that directly influences the loading speed . Here we could distinguish between the network through which our clients connect and access our page -which is totally beyond our control- and the network that we have contracted for our data centre -which we can control. An optimal and quality network will be reflected in an increase in the loading speed of our website.
Finally, the programming , that is, the content and structure of our web page will directly affect the loading speed . In this way, we must hire an optimal programming template or program an optimized design as well.
