www.thecut.com speed test — 20 Oct 2026
Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 15:46 UTC. Grade C (70/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.
Where the first byte went
- DNS lookup 74 ms 22%
- TCP connect 69 ms 21%
- Server wait 188 ms 57%
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 331 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
- The page transfers 3.13 MB over 26 request(s). Images files are 73% of it, so resize and recompress the largest images before anything else.
- The HTML itself arrives gzip-compressed.
- It runs over HTTP/3, so the assets share a connection instead of opening one each.
- 97% 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, 3.13 MB across all of them.
Top issues
Compress text responses
high impact2 text response(s) of 10 KB or more are sent uncompressed, and the document itself is not compressed. That is 332.4 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.
Image delivery and format
high impact2 image(s) over 200 KB and 1 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.
Total page weight
high impactThe page transfers 3.13 MB across 26 request(s), with the document itself at 89.2 KB.
Fix: Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.
Cache static assets
medium impact15 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 impact9 third-party host(s) serve 3.04 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.
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://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/4e8/8a8/c5c61c1e98eb4630408f2ced1ef5d11804-161026-CCC-JE-SBDSCF0186-v2-1.rsquare-zoom.w103.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 2.18 s | 3.8 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/bc1/da4/2cef5bb76deb1aa1370af013a3a1dfe44f-april-lockhart-the-cut-2.2x.rvertical.w335.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 2.12 s | 69.5 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/bc1/da4/2cef5bb76deb1aa1370af013a3a1dfe44f-april-lockhart-the-cut-2.rsquare.w640.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 2.05 s | 61.8 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/778/ba6/830b3e2e13aded7dabba2af929d14a5bae-4x5-Cover-Chocolate.w240.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 2.05 s | 21.5 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/bc1/da4/2cef5bb76deb1aa1370af013a3a1dfe44f-april-lockhart-the-cut-2.2x.rsquare.w640.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 2.01 s | 216.3 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/04c/537/047f0167a101db3f6d0e78ae4023e5f1d2-kbeauty-lede.2x.rsquare.w200.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.96 s | 17.6 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/04c/537/047f0167a101db3f6d0e78ae4023e5f1d2-kbeauty-lede.2x.rsquare.w300.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.95 s | 33.7 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/04c/537/047f0167a101db3f6d0e78ae4023e5f1d2-kbeauty-lede.rsquare.w300.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.86 s | 11.4 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/74d/f07/9a76223a3cf1c1c76a3c828d6d906f9915-figuring-teaching-my-daughter-to-fight.rsquare-zoom.w103.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.85 s | 2.8 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/04c/537/047f0167a101db3f6d0e78ae4023e5f1d2-kbeauty-lede.rsquare-zoom.w103.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.85 s | 2.8 KB |
| https://metrics.thecut.com/gtm.js?id=GTM-NL7LR9Z 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.28 s | 172.9 KB |
| https://assets.nymag.com/media/sites/wwwthecut/cutshop-storytag.svg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.27 s | 1.5 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/331/135/c08708d99221ec538c2091488f547c8417-mens-style-covers-2026-1x1-light-mode.2x.rsquare.w536.gif 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.21 s | 1.79 MB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/bc1/da4/2cef5bb76deb1aa1370af013a3a1dfe44f-april-lockhart-the-cut-2.rvertical.w335.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.21 s | 22.6 KB |
| https://assets.nymag.com/media/components/customer-alert-banner/close_x.svg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.20 s | 143 B |
| https://assets.nymag.com/media/components/customer-alert-banner/double_chevron.svg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.20 s | 139 B |
| https://cdn.concert.io/lib/concert-ads/v2-latest/concert_ads.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.19 s | 113.4 KB |
| https://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.19 s | 131.2 KB |
| https://c.amazon-adsystem.com/aax2/apstag.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.19 s | 92.6 KB |
| https://assets.nymag.com/media/components/customer-alert-banner/alert.svg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.18 s | 337 B |
| https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.17 s | 201.2 KB |
| https://cdn.cookielaw.org/scripttemplates/otSDKStub.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.17 s | 13.6 KB |
| https://assets.nymag.com/js/.clay/vite-bootstrap-11vhe8cI.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.16 s | 8.9 KB |
| https://pub.doubleverify.com/dvtag/21236410/DV464041/pub.js 3rd party | javascript | 200 | 1.16 s | 33.8 KB |
| https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/bda/2dc/9e7f1783fd7b79f213a4b02cbb5a4e99d2-amy-homma.2x.rsquare.w255.jpg 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.15 s | 43.5 KB |
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