What Is TTFB and How Do You Improve It?
Time to First Byte (TTFB) is the time between a browser requesting a page and receiving the first byte of the response. It includes the network journey and the time your server takes to think. Everything else on the page waits for it, so a slow TTFB drags down every other speed measure.
Why it matters
TTFB is not one of the three Core Web Vitals, but it feeds directly into the Largest Contentful Paint. If the server takes a long time to respond, the page cannot start rendering. See Core Web Vitals explained and how to improve Largest Contentful Paint.
What counts as good?
Google's web performance guidance treats a TTFB of about 0.8 seconds or less as good, and more than 1.8 seconds as poor, measured for most real visitors. Treat these as guidelines. Your goal is simply as fast as is reasonable.
What contributes to TTFB
- Network distance and connection setup. Time for DNS lookup, connecting, and the secure handshake. A visitor far from your server waits longer.
- Server processing. Building the page: running code, querying databases, calling other services.
- Redirects. Each redirect adds another round trip before the real page begins.
- Server resources. Overloaded or underpowered hosting responds slowly.
How to measure it
Run a speed test and look at the "server response time" or TTFB. See how to test website speed. Test several pages and at different times of day. Real-user data in Search Console and other tools gives a fuller picture than a single lab test.
How to improve it
Use page caching. Serving a ready-made page instead of building it each time is often the biggest win for dynamic sites. See page caching explained.
Use a CDN. A content delivery network stores copies of your content closer to visitors, reducing distance. See what is a CDN.
Upgrade hosting if needed. Cheap, crowded hosting can be slow. See how to choose web hosting and shared hosting vs VPS vs cloud.
Consider static delivery. Pre-built pages are fast to serve. See static hosting and Jamstack.
Optimize your backend. On CMS sites, remove slow plugins, reduce database queries, and use a current, supported version of the language the site runs on. See how to speed up a WordPress site.
Cut redirects. Link directly to the final URL, and avoid redirect chains such as HTTP to HTTPS to www to a trailing slash version. See 301 redirects.
Enable modern protocols and compression. See HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 explained and gzip and Brotli compression.
Reduce third-party calls on the server side. If your server waits on an external service before responding, that wait adds to TTFB.
What TTFB won't tell you
A fast TTFB is no guarantee of a fast page. Heavy images, scripts, and layout shifts can still make the experience poor. Use TTFB as one clue among several, alongside the full set of load time improvements.
The bottom line
TTFB reflects how quickly your hosting and setup respond. Cache pages, serve from near your visitors, trim redirects, and use decent hosting, and everything downstream improves.