As the last Google update was all about speed. Thus, businesses spending money and resources to optimize their site speeds will be rewarded by Google. So to accurately measure the load time of your website without spending money, you need some best free website speed test tools.

On the contrary, sites that do not pay attention to site speed will be negatively impacted. If there is one factor that can have a significant impact on your organic rankings, it is website speed.

In essence, conducting a website page speed test is essential to keep track of the following metrics:

• Traffic – If the page load time increases from one to three seconds, the bounce probability increases by 32%.
• SEO – Page speed is vital for SEO. If your page doesn’t load quickly, it will rank lower on search engine result pages (SERPs).
• Conversion rate – Bad SEO and low traffic will negatively affect your conversion rate. You'll likely get fewer customers if you run an eCommerce or subscription-based website.

So we wrote this article best free website speed test tools for 2023 to prepare you for what’s coming and introduce you to some of the best free website speed test tools, but before moving to the tools list, let’s see first why fast websites are essential and how to improve your speeds.

Why is a Fast Loading Website Essential?

Have you ever been on a website that was so slow you had to check your internet connection? How about a website that doesn’t load forms and other elements you need? It can only get worse than encountering a 404 page not found error.

I guess you quickly left that website and opted for a faster one that provided the required information. It doesn’t matter whether you are looking to buy a product or just browsing; slow sites don’t elicit the best feelings. 

Slow speeds kill user experience (UX) if you run or own a website. Besides, page speed correlates with better rankings in search engine results pages, keeping other factors constant. 

If you run a sluggish website, you will leave a lot of traffic (and money) on the table, considering organic traffic is one of the best traffic you will ever have.

Offering your users and search engines a faster website is all about providing a better user experience. 

Human visitors can easily find the content they need, and search engine spiders can quickly index your content. But if your competitor outshines you as far as speeds go, they’ll take your spot. 

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How to Improve Your Website Speed?

The best way to improve your site speed is to use tools to check the speed of your web pages and implement the suggestions offered by them. Apart from that, there are a few universal site speed improvement suggestions that every website should implement.

Here are some suggestions on how to improve your website speeds: 

• Start with a great web hosting company – A good web hosting company guarantees fast speeds, security, and fantastic customer support. But remember, you cannot expect world-class performance from a web hosting company that charges $0.99 monthly.
• If you use WordPress, delete plugins and themes that you don’t use – They pose a security threat and slow down your website since your server loads them every time a user visits your site. Some plugins are notorious for eating your server resources as well.
• Reduce HTTP(S) requests to your server – The fewer the requests, the faster your website.
• Optimize your images for fast loading – Heavy images will take a lifetime to load. Don't use any other dimensions if you need a 600 x 300 image. Also, eliminate EXIF and metadata that adds to the weight and size of your photos.
• Leverage the power of content delivery networks (CDNs) – A CDN can significantly improve the website’s speed. Besides, enable GZIP Compression, take advantage of the latest caching technologies, and defer the loading of scripts.

Free Website Speed Test Tools to Test Your Website

Now that you know the importance of good website speed for your business website and some tips to keep your site faster, let’s discuss the top free tools to test site speeds.

Here are the best website speed optimization tools:

The best site speed test tool you should use is Google Page Speed Insights.

Page Speed, Insights' importance, has increased due to the recent Page Experience Update. This tool provides suggestions to improve LCP and confirm whether your site passes the Core Web Vitals test. 

Enter your page URL (you can enter individual URLs of your site and check the speed of every page using this tool) and click on Analyze.

Page Speed Insights tool will display the total LCP, FCP, the time to interact, and the full blocking time.

You will also see a column for opportunities that will offer suggestions to help your page load faster. Consider implementing every piece of advice suggested by the Page Speed Insights tool. 

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Pingdom Tools is a fantastic website speed test tool to check site speed. It uses 80+ global polling locations to test site speed and offers valuable suggestions for page speed improvement.

You only need to enter your website URL and choose the location where you want to check the speed. This tool will display a performance grade and offer suggestions to improve page performance.

Carefully analyze all the suggestions offered by the tool and take the help of your developer to implement as many suggestions as possible.

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Anyone can view your website, so it’s essential to ensure it’s accessible to everyone. WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool lets you make your website content more accessible to individuals with disabilities.

When you enter your website into this tool, you’ll get a full report on things like contrast errors, structural elements in your design, and where you’re missing ALT text.

While this tool is not a performance tool, running your website through it is essential. Improving accessibility on your site can help with user experience, which can help you rank in search engines and build trust with your visitors. 

WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool is free to use and one I highly recommend everyone run their websites through because a more accessible web makes for a better web.

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Interestingly, you will get different results on different tools. Hence, it is better to test your site using a combination of tools so you don’t miss any opportunity for speed improvement.

GTmetrix is an advanced website speed test tool that offers a performance report and a speed grade.

The Waterfall model is beneficial where you can see the resources used by individual elements on a web page.

Furthermore, the YSlow recommendations and Page Speed recommendations are worth implementing. 

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Site 24×7 is probably one of the best free web speed test tools. It is affordable as Pingdom, with an annual membership charge of $108. 

They have a “Free Forever Plan” for five monitors with email notifications. Still, with a paid membership, you get 110+ locations, ten monitors, status pages, etc. These benefits are enough for most websites. 

Its specialty includes server environment performance, easy to read waterfall graphs. It can also integrate with other system administrator tools, differentiating it from other tools on the list.

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Web Page Tests is another free speed testing tool with many exciting and advanced features. Unlike other tools, it gives two different views of the report – The first view and the repeat view.

At first, when the URL is entered, the “First View” report is displayed, and when “Re-run the test” is clicked, another page is added with three test results. It helps to diagnose the report in-depth and with a better understanding.

Besides, it allows you to choose from 40+ unique locations and 25 browsers, including mobile phones.

Grading is done between F to A, depending on different testing parameters. It tests compression, caching, FTTB, effective use of a CDN, etc., to the website performance report.

You can get six segments in the report, which include a summary, performance review, details, content breakdown, plus screenshots.

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Sematext suite has introduced Synthetics, a speed test tool to monitor website performance. Recently this speed test tool has become popular among users. This tool is easy to use and allows users to test the loading speed across multiple locations and devices.

Moreover, this website performance testing tool provides an intuitive user interface to monitor the status of your website. This tool also offers multiple triggers to notify you when your website is not performing well.

This tool is among the website performance testing tools which offer a free trial to explore its features. For more advanced features of this tool, you will need to subscribe to a subscription plan.

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There can’t be a better tool for beginners than IsItWP’s free Web Page Speed Test Tool.

The tool is designed to produce quick results, run tests multiple times, and give detailed reports to analyze the causes of slow website performance. 

You also get advice to improve the site speed. Click on the given categories and resolve the speed issue. Additionally, server uptime monitoring is another helpful feature to explore in this tool.

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Recommended for you:

The image size is one of the primary determining factors for web page speed.

This web speed test tool measures and analyzes the website’s performance based on the images used. It is a dedicated image analysis tool powered by Cloudinary. 

The tool provides detailed optimization insights by testing the site’s performance beyond a simple compression check.

It can dramatically improve page load speed by helping you know how to change image size, format section, encoding, and quality.

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Dotcom-Monitor’s free website test tool is one of the most effective free tools. It provides browser-based load time testing of all page elements, reports from nearly 35+ global locations, and detects slow or missing elements.

It can also test via web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, IE, and mobile web browsers, including iPhone, iPad, and more. Plus, it displays a complete waterfall report, charts & graphs to analyze the report in-depth.

It is a comprehensive tool to help users, developers, and web admins to improve their site’s performance and upgrade their page experience for visitors.

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