How to test your website speed for free

The best free way to test your website speed is Google's own tool, PageSpeed Insights, at pagespeed.web.dev. Paste in your web address, click Analyze, and within a minute you get a score from 0 to 100 for phones and for computers, plus a list of what is slowing the page down. The score matters less than two things: how long the main part of the page takes to appear on a phone, and which one or two problems the report puts at the top. Pair it with a simple stopwatch test on your own phone, and you have a fair picture.

Step one: run the test

Open PageSpeed Insights in any browser.
Go to your own website in another tab and copy the address from the address bar, including https://.
Paste it into the box on PageSpeed Insights and click Analyze.
Wait. The test loads your page on a simulated phone and takes around half a minute to a minute.

When it finishes, you will see two tabs near the top: Mobile and Desktop. It opens on Mobile. Stay there; most of your customers are on phones, and the phone result is almost always the worse of the two.

Step two: read the top section, if there is one

The first block on the page is headed something like "Discover what your real users are experiencing". This is real-world data, collected from people using Chrome who visited your site over the last month.

For many small-business sites, this section says there is no data, because the site does not get enough visits from Chrome users for Google to report. That is normal and not a problem. Skip to the next section.

If it does show data, you will see three measurements with a verdict of Passed or Failed for what Google calls Core Web Vitals. These are the closest thing to how your actual customers experience the site. What each measurement means for a customer is covered in website speed and Google.

Step three: read the score, plainly

The next section is headed something like "Diagnose performance issues". At the top is a circle with a number from 0 to 100 under Performance, in one of three colors:

Green (90 to 100): quick. Nothing urgent to do.
Orange (50 to 89): needs some work. Most small-business sites land here, and many are perfectly usable.
Red (0 to 49): slow. Customers on phones are likely waiting noticeably, and it is worth fixing.

Three things to know about this score:

It is a simulated test, on a mid-range phone with a slowish connection. It is designed to be strict.
It changes between runs. Run it two or three times and look at the middle result. A swing of several points means nothing.
It is a guide, not Google's verdict on your site. No score guarantees or prevents anything in search.

You may also see smaller scores for Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO. The SEO one is a basic checklist (does the page have a title, can it be read on a phone), not a measure of how well you appear in Google.

Step four: look at the timings

Below the score is a set of timings. The two most useful for an owner:

Largest Contentful Paint: how long until the biggest thing on the first screen, usually your main photo or headline, appears. Under 2.5 seconds is good. Over 4 seconds is slow.
Cumulative Layout Shift: how much the page jumps around as it loads. Close to zero is good.

You will also see First Contentful Paint (when anything at all appears), Total Blocking Time (how long the page is too busy to respond to taps) and Speed Index (how quickly the screen fills in). These are useful to whoever fixes the site, but if you only remember one number, make it Largest Contentful Paint.

There is often a strip of small screenshots showing the page loading frame by frame. That is worth a look: it shows you exactly what a customer stares at while waiting.

Step five: read the suggestions, and pick the big ones

Further down is a list of suggestions, grouped under headings such as Insights or Diagnostics. Google changes the wording from time to time, but on small-business sites the common ones are about:

Images: wording like "Improve image delivery" or "Properly size images" means your photos are much larger than they need to be. This is the most common problem and the easiest to fix. Making images smaller so your website loads faster explains how.
Render-blocking requests or resources: files the page must download before it can show anything, often fonts and add-ons.
Unused JavaScript or CSS: code the page loads but does not use, common with plugins, chat tools and builders.
Third-party code: add-ons from other companies, like chat widgets, review widgets and social feeds.
Large layout shifts: things that move after the page appears, often banners or images without a set size.

Click any suggestion and it expands to show which files are responsible. You do not need to understand them all. Look at which ones the report lists first or estimates will save the most time, and start there.

A test with no tools at all

PageSpeed Insights simulates a phone. To see what your customers see, do this:

On your phone, turn off wifi so you are on mobile data.
Open a private browsing window, so nothing is saved from earlier visits.
Type your web address and start counting as you press Go.
Stop when you can read the headline and see the phone number.

If it is more than about three seconds, customers notice. Try it from somewhere with a weaker signal, like a parking lot, for a realistic worst case. While you are at it, check the page is easy to use on the phone; is your website mobile-friendly? has a one-minute check.

Other free tools

Lighthouse in Chrome. The same test PageSpeed Insights uses is built into the Chrome browser on a computer. Right-click the page, choose Inspect, then the Lighthouse tab. Results depend on your own computer and connection, so they differ from PageSpeed Insights.
Search Console. If your site is set up there, the Core Web Vitals report shows real-world speed for groups of pages over time, when there is enough data.

Many other speed-test websites exist. Their numbers differ from Google's because they test from different places and phones. Pick one tool and compare against yourself over time rather than comparing tools.

What to do with the results

Green or orange, with a quick phone test: leave it. Spend the time on your content instead.
Orange or red, with images at the top of the list: shrink the photos, especially the big one on the home page. Retest.
Red, with a long list of scripts and add-ons: remove add-ons you do not use, then retest.
Red, even after the easy fixes: the problem is probably how the site was built. Ask whoever maintains it what they can do, or consider a lighter site.

What to do this week

Run PageSpeed Insights on your home page three times and note the middle Mobile score and Largest Contentful Paint.
Run it on your busiest service page and your gallery page.
Write down the top two suggestions on each.
Do the phone stopwatch test on mobile data.
Fix the images first, then test again.

If the report keeps pointing at things built into your site that you cannot change, you can see your site rebuilt first and run the same test on the new version before deciding.