Website Speed Statistics UK: 260 Websites Measured
By Christian Schreiber · Updated
PerfDelta measured the home pages of 260 websites from the UK. The largest groups are online retail, media and publishing, and finance and insurance. 54% of them pass all three Core Web Vitals, against 49% across all 4,277 websites measured.
Clearest advantage over all measured websites: Time to First Byte (median), 545 ms against 684 ms. Largest gap: Good INP, 67% against 74%.
Core Web Vitals pass rate by metric
Share meeting each threshold at the 75th percentile.
UK compared with all measured websites
| Metric | UK | All websites | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass all three Core Web Vitals | 54% | 49% | better |
| Good LCP | 82% | 71% | better |
| Good INP | 67% | 74% | worse |
| Good CLS | 80% | 74% | better |
| Lighthouse score (median) | 44 | 42 | better |
| Page weight (median) | 3.6 MB | 4.3 MB | better |
| JavaScript (median) | 1.7 MB | 1.6 MB | worse |
| Third parties per page (median) | 5 | 5 | same |
| Time to First Byte (median) | 545 ms | 684 ms | better |
Market conditions in the UK
In the UK, non-essential cookies need prior consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) and UK GDPR, overseen by the Information Commissioner's Office. Larger sites mostly use a commercial consent platform for this. Many UK publishers and retailers also run advertising and affiliate technology, which adds tag managers and ad scripts to the home page.
What to check first on websites in the UK
Start with the tag manager container: count which tags fire on the home page before the first interaction and move everything that only serves later pages or events out of the initial load. Ad slots need reserved space so that CLS stays low, and the consent platform should load in a way that does not delay the largest image.
Third-party code on 98% of home pages
Besides Google Tag Manager, the most common here are OneTrust (Optanon) on 32%, Google Ads (DoubleClick) on 14% and Meta (Facebook) on 11%.
| Provider | Share | Main thread (median) |
|---|---|---|
| Google Tag Manager | 64% | 370 ms |
| OneTrust (Optanon) | 32% | 95 ms |
| Google Ads (DoubleClick) | 14% | 158 ms |
| Meta (Facebook) | 11% | 260 ms |
| Adobe Tag Manager | 10% | 113 ms |
Most common lab findings
| Finding | Share | Saving (median) |
|---|---|---|
| Render-blocking resources | 91% | 5180 ms |
| Unused JavaScript | 86% | 1950 ms |
| Images not properly sized | 76% | 1737 ms |
| Unused CSS | 66% | 450 ms |
| Images not in next-gen formats | 38% | 999 ms |
Platforms in the sample
The most frequently detected platform is Next.js with 44 websites.
- Next.js: 44
- Shopify: 33
- WordPress: 33
- Adobe Experience Manager: 22
- Contentful: 21
- Other platforms: 44
- No platform detected: 63
Industries in the sample
- Online retail: 92
- Media and publishing: 39
- Finance and insurance: 29
- Travel and hospitality: 26
- Public sector and non-profit: 21
- Other industries: 53
Other countries
- Website speed statistics Germany: 71% of 246 websites pass
- Website speed statistics USA: 52% of 2,033 websites pass
Sample, methodology and citation: Website Speed Statistics and methodology.
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