I love questions like this: “what is the best page speed testing tool 2022?”
The reason being the answer really is a joke – the one you use!
OK jokes aside — 90% of my clients do NOT do regular speed testing. Now you get the joke!
Any tool is the best tool if you actually use it!
AND more importantly – when you have a publishing process that includes speed testing you are really on the right path for page speed optimization.
OK so what is the best page speed testing tool in 2022?
Should I say ‘read above’ !
OK, you are probably getting that I am a pragmatist when it comes to page speed optimization.
While any speed testing tool that you actually use for testing ALL your content is a great tool, there are some that are better that others – especially when you want to start solving page speed optimization issues.
Any speed testing tool though within certain parameters, is a good tool.
Any tool that makes your life easier and more fun and gets you the results you want is a good tool.
So which page speed testing tool do I prefer in 2022
There is only one speed testing tool that I use by choice, and one I am forced to use.
GTmetrix is my speed testing tool of choice and of course I am ‘forced’ to use Google’s speed testing tool : PageSpeed Insights.
Why I choose GTmetrix as my page speed testing tool of choice
The answer is simple – it’s the best!
There is no other page speed testing tool that ‘hits the spot’ on almost every point.
There is only one point where GTmetrix misses the spot for me – just one thing I wish it would do – count the number of unique domains for me where requests are loaded from.
I used to use Pingdom for this but it seems in their latest tool releases they are not doing this any more for some reason or the report is just broken.
Maybe the joys of being bought out by a bigger company and losing focus about why people actually use their tools!
I can get the domain count from GTmetrix – I just have to sort the domains and then manually count them. And yep you guessed it — I am a little lazy to do this most of the time.
On Crunchlets.com it’s easy for me to count – just one!
Remember each extra domain slows down your site because of the DNS lookups and SSL processing.
Why do I say I am 'forced' to use Google's PageSpeed Insights?
While GTmetrix does have a great Google Core Web Vitals section on its reports, you should ALWAYS look at Google’s core data that it uses to rank your site.
GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights use the same base testing tool (Google Lighthouse), but at the end of the day never forget Google may see things differently.
As they say in a dragon’s lair – keep your eye on the dragon!
