www.ons.gov.uk speed test — 20 Oct 2026
Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 14:22 UTC. Grade B (81/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.
Where the first byte went
- DNS lookup 59 ms 16%
- TCP connect 26 ms 7%
- Server wait 275 ms 76%
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 360 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
- The page transfers 1.03 MB over 18 request(s). Other files are 81% of it, so that one type is worth a look on its own.
- The HTML itself arrives gzip-compressed.
- It runs over HTTP/3, so the assets share a connection instead of opening one each.
- 88% of the weight comes from other hosts (analytics, fonts, embeds), which also means their slow day becomes your slow day.
- The largest element painted at 756 ms, inside the 2.5 s Google calls good.
- Layout shift is 0.478 (good is under 0.1): something without a reserved size is loading late - an image, an ad, or a font swap.
- The main thread was blocked for 16 ms in total, which is not enough to feel.
Fix first: Total page weight - Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.
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.
Screenshot
What the page looks like
Loaded in headless Chromium on this server. Click an image to open it full size.
Browser render
The same URL loaded in a real browser, so these are the readings curl cannot produce. The grade above is still built from the server measurements.
Page weight by type
What the page is made of
Transfer size, compressed as sent. 18 request(s) in total, 1.03 MB across all of them.
Top issues
Total page weight
medium impactThe page transfers 1.03 MB across 18 request(s), with the document itself at 13.1 KB.
Fix: Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.
Cache static assets
medium impact8 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 impact4 third-party host(s) serve 932.1 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.
Avoid extra redirects
medium impact1 redirect hop(s) before the page load started, each one a full round trip before the first byte.
Fix: Link to the canonical URL (and make sure http, the apex domain and www all point at it) so no visitor pays a redirect first.
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://static.ons.gov.uk/images/9eba40bd-f6c2-41d8-8dcd-7eb67c184f05/original/Homepage-thumbnail_Hero-video_v2.png 3rd party | other | 200 | 5.11 s | 139.3 KB |
| https://cdn.ons.gov.uk/assets/images/census-logo/logo-census-2021-white-landscape.svg 3rd party | images | 200 | 5.11 s | 2.9 KB |
| https://static.ons.gov.uk/images/a891289e-3abd-4027-bc98-a674d311db56/original/2912%20Census%202031%20topic%20consultation_website%20thumbnail_v1-00-01.png 3rd party | other | 200 | 5.11 s | 575.8 KB |
| https://static.ons.gov.uk/images/a23f6daa-78f2-4bbc-b1c5-3006d215e91c/original/other.png 3rd party | other | 200 | 5.11 s | 39.8 KB |
| https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.7.1/jquery.min.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 5.11 s | 29.7 KB |
| https://static.ons.gov.uk/images/c58a8f8f-3fbb-4600-87d3-f11d0efd0bec/original/header%20%281%29.png 3rd party | other | 200 | 5.11 s | 19.1 KB |
| https://static.ons.gov.uk/images/fb9be62f-1124-43ab-ad1d-21f106e09c4c/original/image%20%289%29.png 3rd party | other | 200 | 5.11 s | 6.4 KB |
| https://cdn.ons.gov.uk/sixteens/73c6f22/js/main.js 3rd party | javascript | 0 | 5.11 s | 0 B |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-MBCBVQS 3rd party | html | 200 | 612 ms | 92 B |
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/js/app.js | javascript | 200 | 604 ms | 110.0 KB |
| https://static.ons.gov.uk/images/0f82a37b-7cb8-4840-9ddc-31738be805de/original/Data-coherence.png 3rd party | other | 200 | 593 ms | 45.8 KB |
| https://cdn.ons.gov.uk/assets/images/icon-checkbox.svg 3rd party | images | 200 | 579 ms | 444 B |
| https://static.ons.gov.uk/images/df0aa714-7b44-41ba-a09b-c44e89cfad06/original/secure.png 3rd party | other | 200 | 558 ms | 5.2 KB |
| https://cdn.ons.gov.uk/assets/images/ons-logo/v2/ons-logo.svg 3rd party | images | 200 | 553 ms | 2.3 KB |
| https://cdn.ons.gov.uk/sixteens/73c6f22/css/main.css 3rd party | css | 200 | 550 ms | 46.4 KB |
| https://static.ons.gov.uk/images/13180b6e-1013-4013-bd2e-5f9c89e40664/original/navigating.png 3rd party | other | 200 | 549 ms | 18.3 KB |
| https://cdn.ons.gov.uk/assets/images/logo-ogl-footer.svg 3rd party | images | 200 | 549 ms | 598 B |
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