{"id":549225,"date":"2018-02-13T14:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/?p=549225"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:27:45","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T08:27:45","slug":"pingdom-vs-gtmetrix-vs-webpagetest-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/blog\/pingdom-vs-gtmetrix-vs-webpagetest-different\/","title":{"rendered":"Pingdom vs GTmetrix vs WebPagetest: How Are They Different?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pingdom, GTmetrix, and WebPagetest are the three most popular options available for testing website speed and performance<\/a>. But when you scan your website with each of these tools, they invariably offer very different results.<\/p>

For instance, check out the results I get when I run the same site through each of these tools using their default settings:<\/p>

Pingdom<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>

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GTmetrix<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>

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WebPagetest<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>

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It\u2019s easy to get overwhelmed by all the data these tools spit out when you measure the speed of your site<\/a>. But putting aside all the different information for a moment, let\u2019s focus on load time: how about those wildly different times<\/strong>, right?!<\/p>

GTmetrix tells me my site is lightning fast, loading in less than a second. Meanwhile, Pingdom says my site takes 2.18 seconds to load and WebPagetest says it\u2019s almost half that at 1.48 seconds.<\/p>

At first glance, these tools look like they offer similar features. But there are some important key differences that explain why my site\u2019s load time varies so much from tool to tool.<\/p>

In this post, we\u2019ll take a look at what these key differences are so the next time you test your website you\u2019ll have a better understanding of your performance results.<\/p>

1. Test Location<\/h2>

The test location you choose plays a big part in determining your site\u2019s results. The geographical distance between the test location and the server where your website is hosted means latency and the quality of the network connection both becomes factors at play.<\/p>

My site is hosted in San Francisco. Since I used the default test location for each tool when I scanned my site, Pingdom tested from Stockholm, Sweden; GTmetrix tested from Vancouver, Canada; and WebPagetest tested from Dulles, Virginia.<\/p>

Dulles, and even more so Stockholm, are much further away from San Francisco than Vancouver is, which explains the big difference in my load time results \u2013 testing my site from Vancouver produced a much faster page load time than testing from Stockholm.<\/p>

It\u2019s always best to choose the location that\u2019s closest to your target audience for the most accurate picture of your page load. Pingdom, GTmetrix and WebPagetest each offer multiple locations to test from:<\/p>

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While GTmetrix has seven test locations, it provides a total of 28 dedicated test servers: 11 in Vancouver, five in Dallas, seven in London, two in S\u00e3o Paulo and one each in Sydney, Mumbai and Hong Kong.<\/p>

Pingdom\u2019s tests are also done from dedicated servers.<\/p>

WebPagetest, however, is able to provide so many test locations because anyone can host a test location for them<\/a>. There are minimum system requirements, of course, but when testing your site with WebPagetest it\u2019s best to assume that not all servers have the same hardware, and therefore not the same performance.<\/p>

2. Time to Stop Testing<\/h2>

When<\/em> each of these three tools finishes testing your site impacts your results. If you\u2019re new to site performance testing, you might be surprised to know that there isn\u2019t simply one time when these tools decide their analysis is complete.<\/p>

There are two different points during the loading of a web page that can are generally used determine when a performance test should be stopped:<\/p>

Onload time<\/strong> is when the web page has finished processing and all of the resources on the page, including images, text and scripts, have finished downloading. During this time, there may be JavaScript that initiates subsequent requests. Some elements of the page may not make it in before this event fires, causing inconsistent page load times.<\/p>

Fully loaded time<\/strong> is measured as the time from when the visitor initially navigated to the page until 2 seconds after there\u2019s no network activity. This event fires when a page has completely stopped loading content, including below the fold elements. This means that while your site may have loaded fast above the fold, the performance scan waits for the entire page to stop loading data before it stops, so the page load time might be longer.<\/p>

Each of the three testing tools offers different options for when you want to complete a performance analysis:<\/p>