www.esquire.com speed test — 20 Oct 2026
Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 13:29 UTC. Grade B (82/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.
Where the first byte went
- DNS lookup 70 ms 19%
- TCP connect 39 ms 11%
- Server wait 259 ms 70%
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 369 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
- The page transfers 1.74 MB over 26 request(s). Images files are 92% 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.
- 92% of the weight comes from other hosts (analytics, fonts, embeds), which also means their slow day becomes your slow day.
Fix first: Image delivery and format - 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.
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, 1.74 MB across all of them.
Top issues
Image delivery and format
high impact2 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.
Total page weight
high impactThe page transfers 1.74 MB across 26 request(s), with the document itself at 133.7 KB.
Fix: Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.
Third-party weight
medium impact1 third-party host(s) serve 1.61 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.
HTML document size
medium impactThe document transfers 133.7 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.
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://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/17ba6dd4-930a-416f-8b92-aeccdade302d.jpeg?crop=0.754539951574xw:1xh;center,top&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.39 s | 48.5 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/7da851b6-0c3b-4451-bd61-30a02ac9d5c1.jpeg?crop=0.697605473204xw:1xh;center,top&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 1.05 s | 40.9 KB |
| https://www.esquire.com/_assets/design-tokens/fre/static/icons/envelope-simple-regular.91a0134.svg?primary=var(--_palette-gray-34) | images | 200 | 950 ms | 339 B |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/200a72e6-38df-4d81-ba08-a39737c0d5f9.jpg?crop=1xw:0.667xh;0xw,0.088xh&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 930 ms | 52.3 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/e968cc1a-fea7-4ae5-a669-d34a718a009b.jpeg?crop=0.656344410876xw:1xh;center,top&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 928 ms | 19.9 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/8a252bf4-48b7-4ff6-a02e-ddceb0591435.jpg?crop=0.5xw:1xh;center,top&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 917 ms | 21.7 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/200a72e6-38df-4d81-ba08-a39737c0d5f9.jpg?crop=1xw:0.667xh;0xw,0.088xh&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 911 ms | 83.5 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/353f13f3-9e98-42b4-85e3-ec832beca484.png?crop=0.698xw:1xh;0.199xw,0xh&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 905 ms | 288.7 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/17ba6dd4-930a-416f-8b92-aeccdade302d.jpeg?crop=0.754539951574xw:1xh;center,top&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 903 ms | 74.5 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/d3aa2df7-1de3-4e3e-b9e3-3de116a037fa.jpg?crop=0.5xw:1xh;center,top&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 885 ms | 26.9 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/74da5fc1-1d3d-44fd-98d3-83bccba74a6c.jpg?crop=0.5xw:1xh;center,top&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 875 ms | 44.2 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/4caed9fd-c9f3-420e-bbff-9ec1a5e3a2e8.jpeg?crop=0.556xw:0.991xh;0.171xw,0&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 871 ms | 63.2 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/18948509-d25c-4a4c-814a-f27721af502c.jpg?crop=1xw:0.75xh;center,top&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 869 ms | 46.4 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/d3aa2df7-1de3-4e3e-b9e3-3de116a037fa.jpg?crop=0.5xw:1xh;center,top&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 868 ms | 43.2 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/7da851b6-0c3b-4451-bd61-30a02ac9d5c1.jpeg?crop=0.697605473204xw:1xh;center,top&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 867 ms | 70.8 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/4caed9fd-c9f3-420e-bbff-9ec1a5e3a2e8.jpeg?crop=0.556xw:0.991xh;0.171xw,0&resize=480:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 866 ms | 40.6 KB |
| https://www.esquire.com/_assets/design-tokens/fre/static/icons/close.38e3324.svg | images | 200 | 863 ms | 260 B |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/e968cc1a-fea7-4ae5-a669-d34a718a009b.jpeg?crop=0.656344410876xw:1xh;center,top&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 861 ms | 33.8 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/8a252bf4-48b7-4ff6-a02e-ddceb0591435.jpg?crop=0.5xw:1xh;center,top&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 856 ms | 32.4 KB |
| https://www.esquire.com/_assets/design-tokens/fre/static/images/privacy/opt-out.0b0a6a3.svg | images | 200 | 853 ms | 410 B |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/18948509-d25c-4a4c-814a-f27721af502c.jpg?crop=1xw:0.75xh;center,top&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 839 ms | 79.0 KB |
| https://www.esquire.com/_assets/design-tokens/fre/static/icons/caret-left-regular.5546078.svg | images | 200 | 826 ms | 250 B |
| https://www.esquire.com/_assets/design-tokens/fre/static/icons/search.f1c199c.svg | images | 200 | 823 ms | 315 B |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/74da5fc1-1d3d-44fd-98d3-83bccba74a6c.jpg?crop=0.5xw:1xh;center,top&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 818 ms | 69.7 KB |
| https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/353f13f3-9e98-42b4-85e3-ec832beca484.png?crop=0.698xw:1xh;0.199xw,0xh&resize=640:* 3rd party | images | 200 | 815 ms | 464.1 KB |
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