Did you know that a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load has a 13% increase in bounce rate and also affects the SEO score? Therefore, if you want to succeed with your online business, you need to make sure your site is performing good and loads quickly. That’s why, for the purpose of this read, we have put together a list of the best free WordPress performance and speed testing tools.
Why Use A Top Free WordPress Performance And Speed Testing Tool?
You might think that since your website is loading fine on your system, it must be the same for all users around the world. However, factors like server location, internet connection, whether they are viewing it on mobile or desktop, all pull a huge effect on your site’s load time and performance.
This is why we have put together a list of these best free WordPress performance and speed testing tools to help you get a quantitative understanding of your site’s load time. Not only that, but we have also made sure to include tools that provide actionable suggestions so that you can improve your site’s load time and performance.
And so, without further ado, here is our list of the best free WordPress performance and speed testing tools.
Top Free WordPress Performance And Speed Testing Tools
1. GTmetrix
Starting off our list of the best free WordPress performance and speed testing tools, we have GTmetrix. All you need to do is simply enter the URL of the website you want to test and hit the “Test Your Site” button. The software will then begin analyzing the website, which is going to take a few seconds.
Once done, you will get access to tons of insightful information like your website’s full loading time, total page size, and so on. It will even fetch performance scores from PageSpeed and YSlow – two popular performance testing websites we will discuss later on.
Features:
- Gives you a Google PageSpeed score and YSlow score for your website.
- See how your website performs relative to all other websites tested using GTmetrix.
- Track your website performance with monitoring, graphs, and alerts.
- Test website performance by stimulating devices, screen resolutions, and so on.
- Option to test your website loading speed for multiple geographical regions.
And much more.
2. PageSpeed Insights
Next up, we have PageSpeed Insights, a free performance testing tool from Google. All you need to do is enter your website URL in the given field, and the tool will give you a score out of 100 for the loading speeds on mobile and desktop respectively.
And that’s not all, you will also get access to meaningful data and metrics along with suggestions on how you can improve your site’s loading time and performance.
Features:
- Gives you a score for your website speed and performance.
- Lets you know how long the user has to wait before they see something on your website.
- Shows areas that you can tweak to improve your site performance.
- Also gives you an idea of things you did correctly on your website.
And much more.
3. Pingdom
Pingdom is another popular online tool for testing website speed and loading times. All you have to do is enter the website URL followed by the region for which you wish to test the loading speeds. Hit the Start Test button and wait a few seconds for the software to analyze your website.
Once done, it will give you data on your overall page size, load time, and even a performance grade. You will also get information on what type of content is consuming what percentage of your website, so that you can better optimize them. The tool will also let you know the areas in which you can make adjustments to see improvements in your loading time.
Features:
- Allows you to run a website speed test for any geographical location.
- Gives you a performance grade.
- Shows data on page speed and loading time.
- Offers instructions on areas to improve and optimize.
- Generates insightful charts showing what type of content is consuming what percentage of your website.
And much more.
4. Website Speed Test by KeyCDN
Here we have a website speed testing tool for one of the most popular CDN services – KeyCDN. It lets you test your website’s speed, performance, HTTP header, Network, security and much more. All you have to do is enter your site’s URL and the geographical region and run the Test.
It will take a couple of seconds for the software to complete the analysis. Once done, you will get a detailed breakdown of your website and all its content. You will even get to see the individual loading time of each of your webpages.
Features:
- Helps you run speed tests, performance tests, Brotli tests, network tests, security tests, and so on.
- Shows total website size and load time.
- Creates a list of all the different content types of your website and their influence on loading time.
- Gives you a detailed insightful data on how long it takes for each individual webpage to load.
And much more.
5. Load Impact
Load Impact offers a more unique style of doing speed tests and performance tests. It will create a stimulation with virtual users from a particular geographical location trying to access your website, and then generate stats to give you an idea of the overall browsing experience offered by your website.
You will get a real-time graph that showcases the response time of your website and the request rate created by the virtual users. You will also be able to see how many HTTP requests were processed, how many scripts were executed and even compare metrics for a better understanding of your website.
Features:
- Shows your site’s loading time based on a particular region.
- Generates virtual users to browse your website and stimulate browsing experience.
- Creates a graph between response time, request rate, and virtual users.
- Option to analyze metrics and view executed scripts.
And much more.
6. WebPageTest
WebPageTest is an advanced tool for evaluating your site’s speed and performance. The tool allows you to insert multiple parameters including geographical locations, browsers, and so on. You can also head to their advanced settings and specify connection type, clear cache, ignore SSL, and even enter your own custom Script.
Once you have inserted your site URL and specified the parameters, hit the Start Test button and wait a couple of seconds until the analysis is complete. The tool will give you detailed insight about your website from loading time to first byte load time, the starting point of rendering, speed index, first CPU idle, and much more.
Features:
- Helps you perform website speed test based on location and browser.
- Tons of advanced parameters to help you fine-tune the test for more specific results.
- Gives you detailed insightful data on your website performance.
- Option to get a graphical representation of your website performance.
And much more.
7. YSlow
YSlow is one of the most popular and well-known options when it comes to evaluating site speed and performance. Based on Yahoo!’s 34 rules for high-performance websites, the tool tests your website against 23 of these 34 rules that are testable and give your site a performance rating.
Now, unlike the other tools on the list, YSlow needs to be installed on your browser as an extension. However, you can also use other tools like GTmetrix, which we have already seen, that shows YSlow metrics in its search results.
Features:
- Gives a performance grade for your website based on Yahoo!’s 34 rules of high-performance websites.
- Offers suggestions for improving website speed.
- Summarizes the website page contents.
- Shows statistics on every webpage.
And much more.
8. Google – Test My Site
And now for the final entry in our list of the best free WordPress performance and speed testing tools, we have Google – Test My Site. It is a part of the Think with Google software and gives you a basic analysis of how your website performs on mobiles.
All you have to do is enter your site URL, and the tool runs its tests to show your site loading speed under different connection strengths. It will also offer suggestions which you can use to improve your site’s loading time and performance.
Features:
- Basic tool for analyzing website loading speed for mobile versions.
- Option to choose the internet connection type – 4G or 3G.
- Suggests fixes to optimize website performance.
And much more.
In Conclusion
So these were our picks for the best free WordPress performance and speed testing tools. Do let us know if you found the read to be useful and whether it helped you in evaluating your website performance and making appropriate changes to improve the load time.
As you can see, we have made sure to include a diverse array of tools that provides actionable data. This can help you not only get a quantitative understanding of your site’s loading speed, but also insights into how to improve it.
That’s it! Now you may also want to learn our step-by-step guide on how to check your websites speed and performance with a free tool.