Continuously updated rankings showcasing the top-performing and underperforming news sites. It proves that fast-loading, user-friendly articles are achievable, even with subscriptions and advertising in place.
The rankings are based on a 3-day rolling average, evaluated on the mobile versions of articles using Lighthouse.
Recent updates: Switch from WebPageTest Google Lighthouse to test pages and determine ranking.
Why? A number of reasons: WebPageTest moved to a paid API model. Lighthouse performance metric solves for relying on Speed Index alone as a health indicator, is integrated in Chrome browser, and available as a service too.
Developers, designers, and product need to talk more on how to achieve this. A 1,700 word article might weigh 10KB but by the time you load HTML, JS, CSS, images, 3rd-parties, and ads, it can range between 2MB to 8MB depending on the web site. Bear in mind, the first Harry Potter ebook is 1.1MB and that includes cover art.
Tests run hourly, and web pages get tested 2-3 times a day. Results are running average of last 3 days with a focus on Mobile.
All data and test results, using Lighthouse, are publicly available:
The original leaderboard relied on WebPageTest.org to run nightly tests.
Need to get in touch? You can find me on Bluesky at @donohoe.dev