WordPress image fetchpriority hints and the Core Web Vitals
Default auto priority (99.2%), fetchpriority="high" (65.6%), and fetchpriority="low" (0.6%): how image priority hints are deployed across the web and how they move Largest Contentful Paint.
0.6% of WordPress sites use fetchpriority="low" image fetchpriority hints, and 77% of those sites have a good LCP, against 76% of all WordPress sites.
LCP pass rate
Sites with fetchpriority="low" image fetchpriority hints have a good LCP most often: 77%, against 76% of all WordPress sites. Sites with fetchpriority="high" fetchpriority hints have it least often, at 74%.
Image fetchpriority hints usage
Default auto priority is the most used: 99.2% of WordPress sites. Fetchpriority="low" is 0.6% of WordPress sites.
How image fetchpriority hints affect the four LCP phases
Across the four LCP sub-parts in Chrome's field data, the largest gap between fetchpriority="low" and fetchpriority="high" sits in time to first byte (TTFB): 932 ms median for fetchpriority="low" against 1052 ms for fetchpriority="high". Overall median field LCP is 1.7s for fetchpriority="low" (TTFB 932 ms, load delay 172 ms, load duration 115 ms, render delay 288 ms) versus 1.8s for fetchpriority="high".
Image fetchpriority hints per framework
On jQuery, 99% of sites use default auto priority image fetchpriority hints, and 75% of jQuery sites have a good LCP, against 76% of all sites. On Vue, 100% of sites use default auto priority, and 75% of Vue sites have a good LCP.
Alpine 379 sitesDefault priority (auto / unset) 100%fetchpriority="high" 59%82%
jQuery 60,046 sitesDefault priority (auto / unset) 99%fetchpriority="high" 66%75%
Vue 4,829 sitesDefault priority (auto / unset) 100%fetchpriority="high" 72%75%
React 2,226 sitesDefault priority (auto / unset) 99%fetchpriority="high" 71%66%Image fetchpriority hints or the framework
Does the framework explain the image fetchpriority hints difference?
On jQuery, 78% of sites with fetchpriority="low" image fetchpriority hints have a good LCP, against 75% of jQuery sites with default auto priority. Within jQuery, sites with fetchpriority="low" and default auto priority have a good LCP about equally often. On Vue, 75% of sites with default auto priority image fetchpriority hints have a good LCP, against 74% of Vue sites with fetchpriority="high". Within Vue, sites with default auto priority and fetchpriority="high" have a good LCP about equally often.
How fetchpriority="high" and fetchpriority="low" reorder image fetches
In Chromium, <img> requests start at Low priority until layout determines which images sit inside the viewport. Setting fetchpriority="high" (65.6% of sites) elevates the request to High priority during HTML parsing, while setting fetchpriority="low" (0.6% of sites, 77% good LCP) keeps offscreen carousel or thumbnail images from competing with critical resources.
Understanding image fetchpriority hints
Apply fetchpriority="high" only to the single above-the-fold LCP image, and use fetchpriority="low" on secondary carousel slides or product thumbnails that are fetched early. Across the web, 99.2% of sites have default-priority images (76% good LCP), 65.6% ship at least one fetchpriority="high" image (74% good LCP, heavily concentrated on WordPress), and 0.6% use fetchpriority="low" (77% good LCP).
By Arjen Karel · 63,295 crawled WordPress sites (17,005 with desktop Chrome field data, 62,969 sites with image fetchpriority hints, October 2026). How we measured.