www.ycombinator.com speed test — 20 Oct 2026

The first byte arrived after 410 ms. Of that, 268 ms was the server thinking and 142 ms was connection setup. A first byte under 400 ms is what a visitor feels as instant.

Fix: Cut server think time: page cache, query indexes, fewer synchronous calls to third parties inside the request. Connection setup is distance, so a nearer region or a CDN edge helps instead.

13 image(s) over 200 KB and 13 large image(s) still served as JPEG or PNG.

Fix: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG fallback, size images to the space they occupy, and lazy-load anything below the fold. Images are usually more than half of a slow page.

28 render-blocking resource(s) in the document head (3 script(s), 25 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.

The page transfers 6.73 MB across 26 request(s), with the document itself at 47.3 KB.

Fix: Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.

1 third-party host(s) serve 6.68 MB 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.