web.mit.edu speed test — 20 Oct 2026
Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 12:36 UTC. Grade A (92/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.
Where the first byte went
- DNS lookup 61 ms 29%
- TCP connect 27 ms 13%
- Server wait 120 ms 58%
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 208 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
- The page transfers 1.13 MB over 16 request(s). Images files are 67% of it, so resize and recompress the largest images before anything else.
- The HTML itself arrives gzip-compressed.
- It runs over HTTP/2, so the assets share a connection instead of opening one each.
- The largest element painted at 720 ms, inside the 2.5 s Google calls good.
- Layout stayed still (CLS 0.001), so nothing jumps under the reader's cursor.
- The main thread was blocked for 34 ms in total, which is not enough to feel.
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.
Screenshot
What the page looks like
Loaded in headless Chromium on this server. Click an image to open it full size.
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.
Page weight by type
What the page is made of
Transfer size, compressed as sent. 16 request(s) in total, 1.13 MB across all of them.
Top issues
Compress text responses
high impact1 text response(s) of 10 KB or more are sent uncompressed, and the document itself is not compressed. That is 366.7 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
medium impact0 image(s) over 200 KB and 4 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
medium impactThe page transfers 1.13 MB across 16 request(s), with the document itself at 11.4 KB.
Fix: Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.
JavaScript weight
medium impact1 JavaScript file(s) over 200 KB: main.js (366.7 KB)
Fix: Split routes, remove unused dependencies, and prefer a two-file build (one pinned library, one application bundle) over many small ones.
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://web.mit.edu/files/images/202610/MIT-Encora-Therapeutics-dw.jpg | images | 200 | 1.02 s | 63.9 KB |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-M8MGV4P 3rd party | html | 200 | 793 ms | 92 B |
| https://web.mit.edu/files/images/202610/MIT_Nobel-Economics-home.jpg | images | 200 | 754 ms | 63.7 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/themes/mit/assets/css/main.css?tf13vj | css | 200 | 733 ms | 20 B |
| https://web.mit.edu/files/images/202610/MIT-Weather-Forecasting.jpg | images | 200 | 723 ms | 141.2 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/files/images/202606/54884213284_1ab5ed6ceb_b_0.jpg | images | 200 | 717 ms | 141.1 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/themes/mit/assets/favicon/favicon.svg | images | 200 | 710 ms | 484 B |
| https://web.mit.edu/themes/mit/assets/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png | images | 200 | 702 ms | 2.7 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/themes/mit/assets/js/main.js?tf13vj | javascript | 200 | 700 ms | 366.7 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/files/images/202610/MIT_SanaHeal-SL.jpg | images | 200 | 699 ms | 146.2 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/themes/mit/assets/js/modernizr.js?tf13vj | javascript | 200 | 699 ms | 5.6 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/themes/mit/assets/favicon/manifest.webmanifest | other | 200 | 679 ms | 231 B |
| https://web.mit.edu/files/images/202610/MIT_America-dw_0.jpg | images | 200 | 678 ms | 113.9 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/files/images/202505/MIT-This-is-MIT-SLsub_0_0.jpg | images | 200 | 667 ms | 84.1 KB |
| https://web.mit.edu/themes/mit/assets/favicon/favicon.ico | images | 200 | 657 ms | 15.0 KB |
Report this page
Run this test on your own site
The same engine, free, with the screenshots and the fixes. No account needed.