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The Best WordPress Speed Testing Tools (Free and Paid) of 2022

Website Speed Testing Tools
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Check out our post about the best tools to check the speed of your website and other important metrics.

The speed of your website is extremely important. If it loads slowly, visitors will leave before reading much – or any – of your content. If it loads quickly, visitors are more likely to stick around and convert.

This is also why website speed is a major factor in Google’s algorithm. Websites that load quickly are almost always favored by Google and thus rank higher in search results (SERPs).

As such, fast loading websites benefit from higher SEO rankings, increased conversion rates, lower bounce rates, longer visitor retainment time and engagements, and better user experience. Which means it’s really important to have a fast website!

Likewise, the reverse is true for a slow website. Slow websites give your visitors a bad user experience and drive them away, negatively affecting your Google ranking. To avoid this, you need to learn how to test your site’s speed, in order to determine if you are losing potential traffic.

In this article, you’ll learn how to check your website’s speed with a variety of different free tools.

Metrics to Analyze

Speed testing tools analyze a number of parameters to determine your “score”, or the overall website’s speed. But fundamentally, they help you answer two questions:

  • How fast is my website?
  • If it’s slow, how do I make it faster?

Speed testing tools can tell you a variety of useful things, including:

  • how long the first text and image on your website take to appear on your website visitor’s screen
  • how long other pieces of content take to load
  • how long it takes your website page to become interactive

…and so on.

Website speed testing tools calculate this information by determining the Time to First Byte, usually known as TTFB. TTFB is the measurement of the time it takes for a web server to connect to a web browser and download the first byte of data.

Most tools have a “tips” area that suggests improvements depending on your particular situation.

A typical speed tool will perform the following actions:

  • Analyze HTTP headers/requests
  • Analyze total load time, page size and request counts
  • Identify the site assets that are causing slow pages
  • Check if the scripts on your website are minified
  • Identify large images that should be compressed to reduce their sizes
  • Detect render-blocking JavaScript/CSS
  • Check load speed using servers from different countries
  • Testing for Time to First Byte (TTFB)
  • Testing certain Core Vital Scores like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
  • Measure performance of your CDN (if you’re using one)

List of Website Speed Test Tools

There are a number of reliable free and paid website speed testing tools available, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. As such, we recommend using more than one.

That said, don’t spend too much time trying to get a perfect score. This is essentially impossible, no matter how many changes you make. Instead, just improve as much as you can in a reasonable amount of time.

The goal is to have your website load in two seconds or less.

 

Pingdom Speed Test

Pingdom has one of the most popular free website speed testing tools on the Internet.  It’s easy to use and allows you to simulate the loading time from more than 70 locations around the world.

After running the test, you’ll receive a score out of 100 possible points. Other data is shown in a waterfall view. It lists the total requests made to your website, load time and page size. You can filter the result by load order, file size, and load times. It helps you identify which files may be slowing your website such as CSS, JavaScript, or even the external domains these are loaded from.

Pingdom usually stores the results of all speed tests carried out for your website, allowing you to historically track any or all the speed improvements you have made overtime.

Price: While Pingdom is free, there are premium plans starting at $10 per month for those who need help monitoring the website’s performance on a regular basis.

Google Pagespeed Insights

Google Pagespeed Insights is a free website speed testing tool created by Google. Because Google takes into account page speed when ranking websites and displaying them on search results (SERPs), they created their own website speed testing tool. It can help website owners measure the performance of a page on both mobile devices and desktop devices.

A Google Pagespeed Insights score ranges from 0 to 100 points. The higher your pagespeed score, the better. As a general rule of thumb, you will want to achieve a score of 85 and above to have a “pass” mark.

The tool also provides you a report of each issue affecting your website loading speed, along with a detailed breakdown of recommended steps. Some core web vitals reported by Google Pagespeed Insights include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Contentful Paint (FCP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

If you care about ranking higher in SERPs, then you want to take this tool very seriously when optimizing your website speed.

Price: Free

GTmetrix

GTmetrix is one of the most popular and powerful speed testing tools and trusted by many website owners. When you create a free GTmetrix account, you can test your website speed based on geographical location and browser.

GTmetrix grades your website using the A-F grading system. You can test and compare your website performance over different connection types, etc. Its reports are divided into five sections showing reports from Google Lighthouse, waterfall breakdown, video, and history. Each section can be expanded to provide specific examples of files that might require your attention, such as images, Javascript or CSS.

Price: While GTmetrix is free, they have premium offers with extra features worth considering if you have a large site. GTmetrix Pro has different paid plans and price points, starting at $10.67 per month (billed annually) for the starter individual solo plan. You have to buy any of the GTmetrix Pro plans to check the mobile speed of your website.

Uptrends

Uptrend is another great website speed testing tool. You can run the speed test by selecting a geographical location, browser, and you can also switch between mobile and desktop views’ results. Uptrends offer up to 226 locations to choose from. You can run tests based on screen size and throttle your connection speed.

Uptrends results are easy to understand and it also shows a Google PageSpeed score. For a more detailed review of your speed test, you can scroll down to see the reported performance issues.

Price: Free and premium plans starting from $16.24 per month.

WebpageTest

WebpageTest is another online website speed testing tool. It is quite advanced but with a little bit of practice, you can get a hang of it. This tool allows you to run tests based on browser type and geographical location. It usually runs the test 3 times to get a more efficient speed result.

The WebpageTest tool allows you to perform advanced tests such as multi-step transactions, content blocking, changes in connection speed, video capture, and much more.

It shows a detailed view of each parameter in your result which you can click to expand and view the detailed report. The waterfall charts and resource loading reports provide a lot of additional information concerning improvements recommended for your website.

Price: Free

Varvy Pagespeed Optimization

Varvy Pagespeed Optimization, though not very popular, is a very good online free website speed testing tool used for optimizing website speed. It is one of the many website monitoring and optimization tools offered by Internet Marketing Ninjas.

Users can run a single page through this tool or comparison of two pages. When you run a website speed test, the tool examines your resources, CSS delivery, JavaScript usage, services, and page speed issues. Then, it will generate the load time results and supplemental data.

Varvy has a useful selection of resource articles and tutorials to help you improve performance. The tool also has an entire section dedicated to SEO and mobile optimization guides. The tutorials include lessons on critical rendering paths, using browser caching, and delaying JavaScript loading. There are also instructions on how to shorten server response time, enable compression, enable keep-alive, minimize redirects, prioritize visible content, optimize CSS delivery, CDNs, avoid bad requests, defer JavaScript, minimize DNS lookups, etc.

Price: Free

Dotcom-monitor

Dotcom-monitor has a number of free and useful tools, one of which is their popular and powerful website speed testing tool. It allows you to test your website speed from 25 locations around the globe at once.

You can also choose to run tests based on different browsers such as Firefox, Google chrome, Internet Explorer, as well as mobile browsers on iOS, Android and Windows mobile devices.

From the speed test, you can get your website performance based on location, the 10% fastest and slowest elements on your web page, a comprehensive water chart, error check and diagnostics report, and so on. All of these parameters can help you make a more informed decision concerning increasing your website speed.

Price: Free

Site 24×7

Site 24×7 is another platform that offers a free page speed testing tool. When you sign up for a Site24x7 Free Account, you will be able to monitor up to 5 websites for free continuously and be alerted when any goes down. This tool can be used on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X.

This website speed testing tool provides website, network, server, and application monitoring. User feedback for real user monitoring is also available.

Price: Site 24×7 has a free page testing tool. It also has premium plans with more features available for a 30-days free trial website, along with small or premium plans starting at $9 per month.

The free version is limited to 5 server uptime monitors and ten alerts per month. The paid plan covers 5 complete server monitors and 50 alerts per month.

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About The Author
Kiefer Szurszewski

Kiefer Szurszewski

Kiefer is a technical writer with over a decade of experience in a variety of industries. At Convesio, he loves to teach others about creating awesome landing pages, writing great content, building powerful features, and tons of other things about WordPress.
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Yellow Lab Tools

Yellow Lab Tools is a newer website performance and frontend quality testing tool. This tool provides a lot of information and some unique features absent in some other tools on this list such as code validation issues and view of JavaScript to DOM interactions as page loads.

It analyzes and scores your website based on parameters such as number of requests, page weight, DOM, bad JavaScript, bad CSS, Server config, etc.

Price: Free

DareBoost

DareBoost is an all-in-one website testing and monitoring service. With DareBoost, you can run a website speed test, monitor web performance, and analyze your website speed, test SEO and more.

You can only use their website speed testing tool five times a month for free, with limited reporting reserved for premium users. That said, the free reports are very insightful and worth trying out. You get reports covering some key parameters such as cache policy, SEO, accessibility, compliance, number of requests, security, jQuery, browser rendering, and data amount and quality.

With the results, you will be able to identify weak points in your website and optimize them effectively for a better, faster and more secured website.

Price: The DareBoost speed testing tool is free, but for more features, they offer premium plans which start at $59 per month.

Uptime

Uptime is another popular monitoring tool for websites, servers, and domains to check downtime, page speed and domain health. It offers software for server monitoring, page speed monitoring, real user monitoring, and other services. What stands out is its 1-minute interval monitoring across six continents.

Unfortunately, Uptime is not free. However, the platform offers a 21-day free trial, which you can use to test out the tool and make a few website speed tests before deciding if buying it is a good investment for your website.

Price: For more features, you might have to go for one of their different paid plans depending on your website needs. The most affordable plan, the Essential plan, starts at $79 per month and provides about 30+ checks.

Google Chrome DevTools

The Google Chrome DevTools network panel comes integrated as a part of Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers. It is a very common tool among developers as it is easily accessible and a great tool if you want to run debugging and performance testing locally.

To launch the panel, press the Cmd+Opt+I in Mac and F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I in Windows and Linux. You can also right click on any page and click Inspect.

With Google Chrome DevTools, you can run a website speed test which will generate a waterfall analysis report of your website. The performance feature allows you to easily see what is costing you the most time and resources on your web page. It can be broken down into time, activity, and source.

Lighthouse is also integrated into Google Chrome DevTools. This is an automated open source tool for improving the quality of web pages. It can audit website performance, accessibility, etc. You can run the Google Lighthouse audit from the Audit tab, which uses a 0-100 scoring system to grade your website.

Other features in the Google Chrome Devtools include the ability to disable cache, throttle your network connections, take screenshots of your reports and page rendering, diagnose slow TTFB, and requests blocking.

Price: Free

Loader.io

Loader.io is a free simple Cloud-based load testing service that allows you to stress test your web-apps and APIs with thousands of concurrent connections.

Loader.io automatically displays your log management results in charts, graphs and general reports, which you can export to spreadsheet and study offline for better website optimization decisions.

The Loader.io dashboard has advanced analytics reports which are more in-depth, more detailed test results. This includes response times, and response codes for each URL in a test (free users only see aggregated stats for all URLs), response time and bandwidth histograms (much more informative than the averages you get for free), and more to come.

Price: Loader.io is free but also has a Pro plan starting at $99.95 per month.

RoboSwam

RoboSwarm is a WordPress and WooCommerce load testing service. You can use it to test the number of users your website can handle at a time.

If you have an eCommerce website powered by WooCommerce, RoboSwarm can easily determine how many checkouts per second your store can handle on normal days. You can also see the results for special days that can cause a traffic spike, such as Black Friday. Using RoboSwarm, you will be able to give your customers the best experience possible.

Price: RoboSwarm has a free plan which is capped at 5 WordPress & WooCommerce Load Tests per month. Their paid plan starts at $25 per month with 20 WordPress and WooCommerce load tests per month.

BlazeMeter

BlazeMeter is an open-source performance testing software which can be used to test APIs, web and mobile applications at any stage of software development.

It comes with many useful testing features. Tests can be carried out on a massive scale to validate performance at every stage of software delivery.

The user interface is not complex. The tool is easy to understand and the workflow is very simple. It comes with various listeners types, status report types and assertion types.

Price: Free starter plan. Premium plan starting at $99 per month.

Kernl WordPress Load Testing

Kernl WordPress Load Testing allows you to quickly and easily test your WordPress performance.

When you use the tool to test your WordPress website, it provides information about how your site performs under heavy load and where things start to fall apart.

Kernl can track your WordPress website’s response time and time to first byte (TTFB) over the course of a 24 hour period and allows you to see how your site scores on Lighthouse in 5 categories: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, SEO, and Progressive Web App (PWA).

At the completion of your load test, Kernl gives you a detailed route by route breakdown of performance. This allows you to focus your performance efforts on pages where that didn’t perform so great.

One key feature of Kernl is the ability to see your WordPress load test data in real-time. As the tool analyzes your website, it will stream real-time data to the load testing graphs displayed to you. You can use this data to make decisions about whether you should continue your load test or stop it prematurely.

Price: Premium plans starting from $9 per month. Each premium plan comes with a 30-day trial.

k6

k6 is an open source load testing tool for developers to create load and performance testing scripts for testing web pages.

While you can use k6 without much previous experience, basic knowledge of Node Packaging Manager (NPM) and JavaScript are recommended.

Price: Free

Improving Your Speed

Now that you’ve run some speed tests, it’s time to implement solutions to fix them. Some of the most common fixes include:

  • Choosing a fast web hosting service—preferably one that provide Enterprise cloud hosting like Convesio.com
  • Minifying/Optimizing your website’s code and scripts
  • Compressing images and files on your website
  • Use of lazy loading for images and videos
  • Reducing the number of HTTP requests
  • Use of browser compression (also called gzip compression)
  • Checking the performance of your website security/firewall
  • Using a content delivery network (CDN)

 

Looking for a lightning-fast host that you can count on? Check out Convesio’s Enterprise cloud based hosting.

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About The Author
Kiefer Szurszewski

Kiefer Szurszewski

Kiefer is a technical writer with over a decade of experience in a variety of industries. At Convesio, he loves to teach others about creating awesome landing pages, writing great content, building powerful features, and tons of other things about WordPress.
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