www.mirror.co.uk speed test — 20 Oct 2026

The first byte arrived after 540 ms. Of that, 360 ms was the server thinking and 180 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.

2 image(s) over 200 KB and 2 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.

21 render-blocking resource(s) in the document head (1 script(s), 20 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 2.67 MB across 26 request(s), with the document itself at 74.7 KB.

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

1 third-party host(s) serve 2.59 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.