www.politico.eu speed test — 20 Oct 2026

Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 13:39 UTC. Grade B (89/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.

https://www.politico.eu/

20 October 2026 at 13:39 UTC · Free test · report pt_ee7f560dab08

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Grade

89/100

Performance91/100

Structure85/100

12 audit(s) passed, 4 need work

First byte (TTFB)420 msmeasured from this server

Fully loaded2.27 sfirst byte + slowest asset

Requests26document + assets

Page weight874.3 KBcompressed transfer

HTML document66.7 KBbr

ProtocolHTTP/3cloudflare

Third-party44 Bother hosts

Where the first byte went

DNS lookup 56 ms 13%
TCP connect 49 ms 12%
Server wait 315 ms 75%

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

First bytefaster than 53% of 4,999 pages tested here420 ms against a median of 449 ms

Page weightheavier than 59% of 4,999 pages tested here874.3 KB against a median of 650.3 KB

Fully loadedslower than 67% of 4,999 pages tested here2.27 s against a median of 1.84 s

Requestssends more requests than 100% of 4,999 pages tested here26 against a median of 26

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 420 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
The page transfers 874.3 KB over 26 request(s). Images files are 92% of it, so resize and recompress the largest images before anything else.
The HTML itself arrives br-compressed.
It runs over HTTP/3, so the assets share a connection instead of opening one each.
The largest element painted at 792 ms, inside the 2.5 s Google calls good.
Layout stayed still (CLS 0.004), so nothing jumps under the reader's cursor.
The main thread was blocked for 156 ms in total, which is not enough to feel.

Fix first: Server response time (TTFB) - 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.

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.

Mobile screenshot of www.politico.eu — **Mobile** 390 × 844 · 59.0 KB · page is 6000 px tall

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.

Largest contentful paint792 msgood is under 2.5 s

Cumulative layout shift0.004under 0.1 is stable

Total blocking time156 mslong tasks during load

First contentful paint792 msfirst content on screen

Browser page weight2.20 MB246 request(s), scripts included

Failed requests4blocked or unreachable

Largest contentful paint792 ms

Goodgood under 2.5 s, poor over 4 s

Cumulative layout shift0.004

Goodgood under 0.1, poor over 0.25

Total blocking time156 ms

Goodgood under 200 ms, poor over 600 ms

Page weight by type

What the page is made of

Images 24 requests

807.6 KB 92%

Transfer size, compressed as sent. 26 request(s) in total, 874.3 KB across all of them.

Top issues

Server response time (TTFB)

high impact

The first byte arrived after 420 ms. Of that, 315 ms was the server thinking and 105 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.

Render-blocking resources

high impact

3 render-blocking resource(s) in the document head (2 script(s), 1 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.

Image delivery and format

medium impact

0 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.

Avoid extra redirects

medium impact

1 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.