Image hosting origins on React sites
32.4% of audited sites (3,095) serve images from their own origin (67% good LCP, 2.0s median), 93.7% load images from external domains or CDNs (86% good LCP), and 32.0% inline base64 data-URI images (86% good LCP, 1.4s median).
32.0% of React sites use inline data-URI images image hosting origin, and 86% of those sites have a good LCP, against 85% of all React sites.
LCP pass rate
Sites with inline data-URI images image hosting origin have a good LCP most often: 86%, against 85% of all React sites. Sites with same-origin images image origin have it least often, at 67%.
Image hosting origin usage
Cross-origin images is the most used: 93.7% of React sites. Inline data-URI images is 32.0% of React sites.
LCP phase breakdown by image hosting source
Across the four LCP sub-parts in Chrome's field data, the largest gap between inline data-URI images and same-origin images sits in time to first byte (TTFB): 524 ms median for inline data-URI images against 1059 ms for same-origin images. Overall median field LCP is 1.4s for inline data-URI images (TTFB 524 ms, load delay 457 ms, load duration 145 ms, render delay 167 ms) versus 2.0s for same-origin images.
Image hosting origin per platform
On Wix, 100% of sites use cross-origin images image hosting origin, and 94% of Wix sites have a good LCP, against 85% of all sites. On WordPress, 98% of sites use same-origin images, and 61% of WordPress sites have a good LCP.
Wix 5,822 sitesCross-origin / external CDN 100%Inline data: URI images 36%94%
WordPress 2,342 sitesSame-origin (self-hosted) 98%Cross-origin / external CDN 78%Inline data: URI images 23%61%Image hosting origin or the platform
Does the platform explain the image hosting origin difference?
On Wix, 93% of sites with inline data-URI images image hosting origin have a good LCP, against 94% of Wix sites with cross-origin images. Within Wix, sites with inline data-URI images and cross-origin images have a good LCP about equally often. On WordPress, 58% of sites with inline data-URI images image hosting origin have a good LCP, against 60% of WordPress sites with cross-origin images. Within WordPress, sites with inline data-URI images and cross-origin images have a good LCP about equally often.
Why base64 inline data-URI images bloat HTML and delay LCP
Serving images from the same origin (32.4% of sites, 3,095) reuses the primary HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 connection (67% good LCP, 2.0s median). Cross-origin images (93.7%, 86% good LCP) include both dedicated media CDNs and external third-party pixels. Inlining images as base64 data: URIs (32.0% of sites, 3,063) inflates HTML/CSS byte size by ~33% and blocks the parser, dropping good LCP to 86% (1.4s median).
Understanding image hosting origins
Serve images from your primary origin to share the main connection, or add <link rel="preconnect"> if you use a dedicated cross-origin image CDN, and avoid base64 data: URIs for anything larger than tiny CSS icons. Across all audited sites, 32.4% use same-origin images (67% good LCP) while 32.0% inline data: URIs (86% good LCP).
By Arjen Karel · 9,570 crawled React sites (9,110 with all devices Chrome field data, 9,561 sites with image hosting origin, October 2026). How we measured.