www.rollingstone.com speed test — 20 Oct 2026
Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 13:14 UTC. Grade B (88/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.
Where the first byte went
- DNS lookup 77 ms 23%
- TCP connect 71 ms 21%
- Server wait 185 ms 56%
Measured on the connection that fetched the HTML. Every other request on the page waits for the end of this bar before it can start.
How this page compares
Every report published here is in this comparison, so it is a reference population of pages tested from one server - not a benchmark of the whole web.
What these numbers mean
- The first byte arrived in 333 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
- The page transfers 584.1 KB over 26 request(s). Javascript files are 63% of it, so defer what is not needed for the first screen, and drop tags nobody uses.
- The HTML itself arrives br-compressed.
- It runs over HTTP/3, so the assets share a connection instead of opening one each.
- 51% of the weight comes from other hosts (analytics, fonts, embeds), which also means their slow day becomes your slow day.
Fix first: Compress text responses - Turn on brotli (preferred) or gzip for text/css, javascript and text/html in the web server. This is the cheapest win available on almost any site.
Read on one shared server, not a visitor's phone: use it to compare pages against each other, not as a promise about every connection. We fix what these tests find.
The headless browser did not capture this page when the test ran, so only the server measurements are shown.
Page weight by type
What the page is made of
Transfer size, compressed as sent. 26 request(s) in total, 584.1 KB across all of them.
Top issues
Compress text responses
high impact1 text response(s) of 10 KB or more are sent uncompressed, and the document itself is not compressed. That is 49.8 KB of compressible text.
Fix: Turn on brotli (preferred) or gzip for text/css, javascript and text/html in the web server. This is the cheapest win available on almost any site.
Render-blocking resources
high impact13 render-blocking resource(s) in the document head (11 script(s), 2 stylesheet(s)). The page cannot paint until each one arrives.
Fix: Add defer or async to scripts that do not change the first paint, inline the critical CSS, and load the rest with media="print" plus an onload swap.
Cache static assets
medium impact2 asset(s) answer without a Cache-Control max-age, so browsers revalidate them on every visit.
Fix: Version filenames on change and serve them with a long max-age plus immutable. That is what makes a returning visitor fast.
Third-party weight
medium impact8 third-party host(s) serve 295.5 KB of this page. Each one is another DNS lookup, TLS handshake and point of failure you do not control.
Fix: Self-host the libraries you can, drop the tags you cannot justify, and preconnect the ones you keep.
HTML document size
medium impactThe document transfers 117.3 KB. A bloated document delays every other request, because nothing else can start until it is parsed.
Fix: Paginate long listings, move repeated markup into a template, and stop inlining large data URIs into the HTML.
Waterfall
Slowest requests
Each bar is one request's own response time, scaled to the slowest. Assets were fetched in parallel, so the bars overlap in real time rather than stacking. first party third party
| Request | Type | Status | Time | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://ads.blogherads.com/static/blogherads.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.08 s | 5.2 KB |
| https://ads.blogherads.com/sk/00/000/00000/26809/header.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.07 s | 49.8 KB |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=AW-662871975&ver=6.9.10 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.05 s | 162.9 KB |
| https://cdn.makemula.ai/js/mula.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.05 s | 886 B |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/plugins/pmc-plugins/pmc-piano/assets/build/pixels.js?ver=85776936f32c4e07d2ce | javascript | 200 | 1.05 s | 1.3 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/_static/??-eJyNjDkOgCAQAD8krkfQWBjfgkAMCgtxF/X5WlhY2k0ymYEzCR2RLTIknxeHBClo8WXeld4ixuA0wZydN+DQ2KtcqYAfvTJBHM1bKvaKBFnO6RH0PKYw1v3QVFL2bbfeq/801Q== | javascript | 200 | 1.04 s | 9.7 KB |
| https://iabusprivacy.pmc.com/geo-info.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.04 s | 108 B |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/plugins/lazy-load-0.7/assets/build/index.js?ver=36a58e5d155cd1dcf138 | javascript | 200 | 1.04 s | 2.8 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/plugins/pmc-plugins/pmc-getemails/build/index.js?ver=f2f19a52403be86f9fab | javascript | 200 | 1.04 s | 607 B |
| https://cap.ackevenusher.com/appMain/NZONd-u.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.03 s | 48.5 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.min.js?ver=3.7.1 | javascript | 200 | 1.03 s | 30.7 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery-migrate.min.js?ver=3.4.1 | javascript | 200 | 1.02 s | 4.9 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/_static/??-eJyNzDEOgCAMQNELiUWNIQ7Gsyg2CoFCaInX11E3t/+XB1dWNpEgCeRQD0cMOVr17kQopbLAyozCsFUXdjgxZCzcem7gB2JTZJsKgv9+Gx09xhLnzkx6GPtBG38D7Mg3ZA== | javascript | 200 | 1.02 s | 1.2 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/plugins/pmc-plugins/pmc-global-functions/js/pmc-hooks.min.js?ver=6.9.10 | javascript | 200 | 1.02 s | 366 B |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/_static/??-eJydzsEOgjAMBuAXchYlhngwPkvZBils3bIW0bd3iV70RLg1f/p/LazZ2MTqWSGHZSQWyNGan5mQE6CIV4F+oeCgVqRWjpMcYJ+wpuJy8SJbjTGkHoMZFrZK9TxMn7z4mB7eaEE7E4/HSLyVHKiImoxFX3U3zeS/zxE7/9yjOFT8M+7xduquTXs5t003vQEZOYoh | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 11.1 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/plugins/pmc-plugins/pmc-global-functions/js/pmc-consent.min.js?ver=2024.05.18.001 | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 397 B |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/plugins/pmc-plugins/pmc-global-functions/js/pmc-utils.min.js?ver=2024.05.18.001 | javascript | 200 | 1.01 s | 2.7 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/_static/??-eJzTLy/QTc7PK0nNK9EvyClNz8wr1i/ITdZFZqfn5Ccl5uimleYll2TmAwWzIOKJWYkVermZeXpZxTr6RJhTlpmSmg8USaxMLdJPKs3MSYGZlFUOEQWaZJ9ra2huaWBsamRsYJEFAMQ8Okk= | javascript | 200 | 1.00 s | 7.6 KB |
| https://cdn.cookielaw.org/scripttemplates/otSDKStub.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 999 ms | 13.6 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/kacey-james-talerico.jpg?w=680&h=453&crop=1 | images | 200 | 997 ms | 65.7 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/mariah-carey-brother-Morgan.jpg?w=680&h=453&crop=1 | images | 200 | 997 ms | 31.1 KB |
| https://experiments.parsely.com/vip-experiments.js?apiKey=rollingstone.com&data-enable-live-updates=true 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 997 ms | 8.7 KB |
| https://cdn.cookielaw.org/opt-out/otCCPAiab.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 997 ms | 5.8 KB |
| https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/themes/vip/pmc-rollingstone-2022/assets/public/lazyload-fallback.gif | images | 200 | 997 ms | 1.1 KB |
| https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=6035310&c4=&cv=3.9&cj=1 3rd party | images | 200 | 997 ms | 43 B |
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