LCP loading attribute

The loading attribute on the LCP element: eager, lazy, or auto.

Field data PhoneDesktopAll Scope All sites Q2 2026 edition · All devices field outcomes
Metric LCP INP CLS
1

At a glance the headline numbers for LCP loading attribute

The loading attribute on the LCP element: eager, lazy, or auto.

3
Categories
74,590 sites
75.0%
Top share
auto
86ms
Top INP
Median for auto

17.5% of LCP images are lazy-loaded, the one attribute they should never carry.

The State of Web Vitals · Q2 2026 · 189,915 sites · all devices field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
2

LCP loading attribute who uses what, and how fast each group loads

Median INP
0
100ms
200ms
300ms
400ms
500ms
auto86ms75% of sites
lazy88ms18% of sites
eager96ms7% of sites
VariantShare of sitesMedian
auto 55,957 sites
75%
86ms
lazy 13,073 sites
18%
88ms
eager 5,560 sites
7%
96ms

Little daylight between the groups: every variant sits near 86ms median INP. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q2 2026 · 189,915 sites · all devices field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
3

Passing INP per LCP loading attribute which group passes the INP most often

VariantSitesPassing INPINP
Lazy 17.5% 13,073 96% 88ms
Auto 75% 55,957 94% 86ms
Eager 7.5% 5,560 94% 96ms
Good Needs Improvement Poor Sorted best-passing first · median colored by its own rating · pass = good INP (200ms at p75) · one value per site

No variant stands out: pass rates sit between 94% and 96%. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q2 2026 · 189,915 sites · all devices field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
4

Why this matters for the Core Web Vitals, and where to start fixing it

loading=lazy on the LCP image is a self-inflicted delay. A lazy image waits for layout to prove it is in the viewport before it downloads. That puts the most important image of the page behind a step it never needed. The browser would have fetched it immediately.

Usually nobody decided this. Themes and plugins lazy-load every image by default, hero included. The fix is removing one attribute, and the audit is one search through the templates.

Related signals LCP origin → LCP image format → LCP image size → LCP element type → Chrome field data from 189,915 sites, representing millions of real page loads · How we measured