WordPress And Astro Versus Everyone Else

HTTP Archive’s newest Core Internet Vitals Know-how Report ranks seven content material administration platforms and affords the stunning perception that web page weight and PageSpeed Insights Lighthouse scores don’t all the time predict Core Internet Vitals efficiency.

Why Core Internet Vitals Matter

Core Web Vitals (CWV) are metrics created by Google to point out:

How shortly an online web page hundreds
How secure it stays throughout loading
And the way responsive customers might understand the web page.

Whereas Core Internet Vitals is a minor rating issue, it will be important as a result of pages with excessive CWV scores carry out sooner and extra easily for customers and may profit website house owners with greater conversions and higher advert efficiency. Websites with decrease scores are inclined to current customers with friction that may frustrate them, which in flip can enhance abandonment charges and negatively affect conversions.

Does Web page Weight Influence Core Internet Vitals?

It’s generally understood that web page weight impacts Core Internet Vitals scores. However web page weight will not be essentially the dominant issue. So this comparability additionally examines median web page weight to grasp how intently it correlates with low or excessive CWV scores.

What emerges from the comparability suggests the connection will not be fairly as easy because it appears.

How The Information Is Collected

The Core Internet Vitals Know-how Report combines public knowledge from the Chrome UX Report (CrUX) and the HTTP Archive undertaking. The information used for this comparability comes from world statistics, which may give a broader view of how web sites carry out throughout the widest vary of units and web connections.

CrUX collects anonymized real-world area efficiency knowledge from Chrome customers who decide into sharing utilization statistics.
HTTP Archive collects lab-based efficiency and expertise knowledge by crawling and testing web sites throughout the net.
The HTTP Archive median web page weight dataset measures the everyday switch measurement of pages over time.

Evaluating the 2 datasets (CrUX and HTTP Archive) makes it attainable to look at whether or not web page weight correlates with measured and real-world Core Internet Vitals efficiency.

Duda Ranked Highest For Core Internet Vitals

Duda ranked first in Core Internet Vitals efficiency with roughly 85% of web sites receiving a great CWV rating. It additionally maintained one of many lightest median web page weights within the comparability at roughly 1.78 MB.

The connection between lighter pages and stronger CWV efficiency is instantly obvious. Duda paired comparatively light-weight pages with the strongest CWV efficiency within the dataset.

#2 Ranked CWV Platform: Wix

Wix ranked second with roughly 80% of web sites receiving a great CWV rating.

Its median web page weight measured roughly 2.55 MB, noticeably heavier than Duda however nonetheless lighter than a number of lower-performing platforms.

The information continues reinforcing the broader development. Platforms carrying decrease web page weight usually clustered close to the highest of the CWV rankings.

#3 Ranked CWV Platform: Shopify

Shopify is ranked third for Core Internet Vitals efficiency with roughly 79% of web sites receiving a great CWV rating. That’s a surprisingly sturdy rating as a result of purchasing website efficiency tends to get dragged down by third-party scripts, buyer monitoring, and shopping-related options. Shopify websites additionally had the worst web page weight scores and Lighthouse audit scores.

Web page Weight Scores April 2026 (Decrease Is Higher)

Astro: 1.65 MB
Duda: 1.87 MB
Drupal: 2.39 MB
Joomla: 2.65 MB
Wix: 2.67 MB
WordPress: 2.76 MB
Shopify: 3.77 MB

Lighthouse Audit Scores April 2026 (Greater Is Higher)

Astro: 68
Wix: 62
Duda: 54
Drupal: 48
Shopify: 47
WordPress: 44
Joomla: 43

Shopify websites had all these components working towards them and but they nonetheless outperformed almost all the opposite platforms on this comparability. What’s going on?

The primary takeaway is that lowering Web page Weight is just one issue out of a number of for bettering Core Internet Vitals efficiency.

One other perception is that Lighthouse lab audit scores and real-world Core Internet Vitals usually are not rewarding precisely the identical issues.

The Lighthouse audit is delicate to:

JavaScript payload
Unused JS
Render-blocking sources
Artificial throttling situations
Picture inefficiencies
Community waterfall construction

Why Shopify Websites Might Rating Extremely For CWV

Websites hosted on Shopify might have excessive real-world Core Internet Vitals efficiency as a result of Shopify maintains secure rendering conduct, makes use of layouts coded to keep away from shifting, delivers interactivity shortly, and aggressively optimizes useful resource supply via CDN infrastructure and its internet hosting atmosphere.

The above components are the very issues that reply nicely to real-world CrUX measurements:

Measures precise person expertise
Consists of caching results
Consists of CDN conduct
Consists of repeat visits
Displays actual units and connection situations
Measures whether or not the web page in the end feels responsive and secure to customers

Shopify’s outcomes present {that a} website can have excessive web page weight and low Lighthouse audit scores and nonetheless ship a high-quality Core Internet Vitals expertise to customers. Optimizing purchasing web sites will not be simple. Shopify’s efficiency on this comparability is price recognizing.

Why Does Astro Have Good Scores?

67% of web sites utilizing Astro acquired a great CWV rating, inserting it solidly in fourth place. Astro additionally maintained the lightest median web page weight within the dataset. That mixture of sunshine web page weight and strong Core Internet Vitals efficiency reinforces the instinct that light-weight pages assist with CWV scores. However Shopify’s instance exhibits that web page weight will not be the one path towards higher CWV efficiency.

Astro deserves a more in-depth look, nevertheless, as a result of the excessive CWV scores may very well be a mirrored image of the varieties of web sites being deployed with it. For instance, easy blog-style websites don’t want the sort of advanced functionalities that drag down Core Internet Vitals scores.

Astro performs nicely out of the field, however so does WordPress. An additional overview might present that the out-of-the-box Astro benefit might fade as web site complexity will increase.

Drupal Delivers Dependable CWV Efficiency

Drupal ranked fifth with roughly 64% of web sites receiving a great CWV rating.

Its median web page weight measured roughly 2.28 MB, inserting it close to the center of the comparability in each CWV efficiency and web page weight measurement.

Drupal’s efficiency scores from January via April 2026 exhibits stability with no swings up or down. It started the yr at 64% and ended April with the identical 64% rating. Stability is nice, however an upward enchancment, even a modest one, is arguably most well-liked.

What Is Undermining Joomla’s CWV Efficiency?

Joomla ranked sixth with roughly 58% of Joomla-based websites receiving a great CWV rating.

The median web page weight of web sites utilizing Joomla measured roughly 2.53 MB, which is best than among the greater CWV ranked web sites. That is one other anomaly the place a platform delivers low web page weight however mediocre Core Internet Vitals scores.

A overview of HTTP Archive’s Lighthouse Audits efficiency exhibits that Joomla had the bottom Lighthouse scores of all of the CMS platforms on this comparability.

Joomla Scores Lowest On Lighthouse Audits

Astro: 68
Wix: 62
Duda: 54
Drupal: 48
Shopify: 47
WordPress: 44
Joomla: 43

These low scores might point out that execution components, corresponding to render-blocking sources, JavaScript conduct, picture dealing with, and template or extension high quality, often is the components weighing down real-world CWV efficiency for Joomla-based websites.

WordPress Is Final Once more

WordPress is ranked useless final on this comparability with roughly 49% of web sites receiving a great CWV rating. It ranked second to final in Lighthouse Audits simply behind Joomla and was second to final for web page weight with a median web page weight of roughly 2.63 MB.

The distinction with Duda and Astro is very sharp when evaluating web page weight:

Web sites created with Duda have been 1.87 MB
Web sites created utilizing Astro averaged 1.65 MB. .
WordPress websites had a median web page weight of roughly 2.63 MB.

The hole between the platforms is giant sufficient that they now not seem like working throughout the identical efficiency vary.

Median Web page Weight And CWV Efficiency

The platforms with the lightest median web page weights didn’t instantly correlate with prime Core Internet Vitals efficiency.

Web page Weight

Astro: 1.57 MB
Duda: 1.78 MB
Drupal: 2.28 MB

Core Internet Vitals Efficiency

Duda: 85%
Wix: 80%
Shopify: 79%

Low Web page Weight Does Not Assure Good CWV Efficiency

The information seems to help a comparatively easy conclusion: lighter pages usually produce stronger Core Internet Vitals efficiency. However Shopify exhibits that optimizing for web page weight will not be the only path to higher CWV efficiency. The reply lies in how effectively platforms deal with web site complexity.

Shopify’s pages carry much more weight than competing platforms, largely as a result of e-commerce websites require intensive JavaScript, product filtering methods, dynamic stock performance, photos, personalization options, and interactive storefront components.

Beneath a simplistic payload-size mannequin, Shopify ought to carry out significantly worse. However the platform continues producing CWV scores that outperform extra light-weight platforms.

That implies the dialog round efficiency must be as a lot about managing net web page complexity as it’s about minimizing web page weight. The instance of Shopify websites seems to level to net web page complexity because the extra vital issue to optimize for.

A lighter platform should still carry out poorly if rendering and execution are dealt with inefficiently.
A heavier platform should still carry out nicely if its structure aggressively optimizes how that complexity is delivered to customers.

That’s the massive takeaway from the comparability of various platforms.

However, websites which are light-weight usually tended to exhibit stronger CWV efficiency. However Shopify forces a extra nuanced conclusion as a result of it demonstrates that payload measurement alone doesn’t decide outcomes.

The aggressive benefit more and more seems to belong to platforms able to carrying complexity effectively.

Takeaway

What Shopify’s outcomes actually present is that Core Internet Vitals efficiency will not be merely a contest to see which platform can ship the smallest pages. The extra vital query is what occurs after real-world complexity enters the image.

That’s the place the person CWV metrics turn into helpful as a result of they reveal the particular methods web sites fail below strain.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) usually breaks when platforms load outsized photos, delay discovery of the primary picture, block rendering with CSS and JavaScript, or pressure browsers to compete towards too many high-priority sources on the identical time. A website can have comparatively small total payloads and nonetheless carry out poorly if the browser struggles to determine and render a very powerful visible content material shortly.

Interplay to Subsequent Paint (INP) exposes one other weak spot. Third-party scripts, monitoring tags, hydration overhead, popups, sliders, chat widgets, and extreme JavaScript execution can all block the browser’s most important thread and delay responsiveness. That is the place web site complexity turns into costly as a result of each extra characteristic competes for execution time.

Cumulative Structure Shift (CLS) usually breaks when layouts are unstable. Photos with out reserved dimensions, late-loading adverts, embedded media, injected interface components, and dynamic content material can all push seen content material round whereas customers are trying to work together with the web page.

That is the place Shopify’s outcomes turn into extra fascinating. Procuring websites naturally carry lots of the actual components that have a tendency to wreck LCP, INP, and CLS scores. Shopify additionally ranked solely in the course of the Lighthouse efficiency scores, which implies its lab-test outcomes weren’t particularly sturdy in contrast with the remainder of the platforms.

And but Shopify nonetheless maintained one of many strongest real-world CWV performances within the comparability. When speaking about CWV many SEOs concentrate on making websites sooner. But when we’re going to remove one thing from this comparability, it’s that real-world CWV efficiency might come from how nicely a web site handles the technical failure factors and never focusing solely on web page weight kind enhancements.

Featured Picture by Shutterstock/n_defender

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