Time to first byte (informational)

Audit check ttfb · worth 0 of 100 points · all checks

What the audit saw

How long the server took to start responding. Not scored — recorded so you can track it.

Why it costs you

TTFB is the floor under every other performance number: no amount of image optimisation helps if the server takes 3 seconds to answer. It is informational here because a single measurement from one location is noisy.

How to find it on your site

  1. Measure it a few times, take the median 
    for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do curl -sS -o /dev/null -w '%{time_starttransfer}\n' https://your-site.com/; done | sort -n | sed -n 3p
  2. Split DNS, connect, and server time 
    curl -sS -o /dev/null -w 'dns %{time_namelookup} connect %{time_connect} tls %{time_appconnect} ttfb %{time_starttransfer}\n' https://your-site.com/
  3. If TTFB is high but the page is static 
    # put a CDN in front, or cache the rendered HTML at the edge
# a static file should answer in well under 200 ms

How to know it is fixed

Under 200 ms for a static page, under 500 ms for a cached dynamic one.

The part people get wrong

Measuring from your own machine measures your ISP. Use a probe in another region before concluding the server is slow.

Check it against your own site

Open an issue with your URL and a bot runs this check plus 14 others, posts the failures with the measured values, and publishes a report page: free audit. If you want the fixes applied and re-verified instead: fixed-price tiers.

Other checks

The site does not answer on the URL you gave · The page is served over plain HTTP · The TLS certificate is expired or about to exp · No mobile viewport tag · The page title is missing or the wrong length · The meta description is missing or the wrong l · The page has no H1, or more than one · Images have no alt text

All published audits · Check reference