Shopify HTML CDN delivery and the Core Web Vitals
Direct from origin versus Cloudflare, Fastly, CloudFront, or Akamai: how serving the main HTML document through an edge CDN changes Time to First Byte (302 ms on Cloudflare vs 312 ms from origin) and Largest Contentful Paint.
One in five Shopify sites, 18.1%, have no an HTML edge CDN. Of the 81.9% that do, 2% use Akamai as, and 99% of those sites have a good LCP, against 97% of all Shopify sites.
LCP pass rate
Sites with Akamai as an HTML edge CDN have a good LCP most often: 99%, against 97% of all Shopify sites. Sites with CloudFront as CDN have it least often, at 95%.
An HTML edge CDN usage
Four in five Shopify sites uses an HTML edge CDN, and nine in ten of those use Cloudflare as. Akamai as is 2% of the sites with CDN, 2.0% of all Shopify sites.
Where an HTML CDN saves time: TTFB and the four LCP phases
Across the four LCP sub-parts in Chrome's field data, the largest gap between Akamai as and no sits in resource load delay: 611 ms median for Akamai as against 702 ms for no. Overall median field LCP is 1.2s for Akamai as (TTFB 290 ms, load delay 611 ms, load duration 129 ms, render delay 275 ms) versus 1.4s for no.
An HTML edge CDN per framework
On jQuery, 69% of sites use Cloudflare as an HTML edge CDN, and 95% of jQuery sites have a good LCP, against 97% of all sites. On Vue, 71% of sites use Cloudflare as, and 97% of Vue sites have a good LCP.
Vue 933 sitesCloudflare 71%Direct from origin (no CDN) 20%97%
jQuery 3,153 sitesCloudflare 69%Direct from origin (no CDN) 21%95%HTML edge CDN or the framework
Does the framework explain the an HTML edge CDN difference?
On jQuery, 96% of sites with Cloudflare as an HTML edge CDN have a good LCP, against 94% of jQuery sites without an HTML edge CDN. Within jQuery, sites with and without an HTML edge CDN have a good LCP about equally often.
Why putting the HTML document on an edge CDN cuts TTFB
Static assets like images and scripts are easy to put on a CDN, but the browser cannot discover any of them until the main HTML document arrives. Routing the main domain through an edge network terminates DNS, TCP, and TLS at a point of presence near the visitor, and full-page HTML caching at the edge removes the origin server round trip entirely. In Chrome's field data, serving HTML through Cloudflare cuts median TTFB to 302 ms and Fastly cuts it to 237 ms, compared with 312 ms for documents served directly from the origin.
Understanding HTML document CDN delivery
Serve the main HTML document through an edge CDN and cache anonymous page views at the edge wherever possible. Across the dataset, 18.1% of sites still serve HTML directly from an origin server (95% good LCP, 312 ms median TTFB), while sites on Cloudflare (97% good LCP, 302 ms TTFB) and Fastly (92% good LCP, 237 ms TTFB) start rendering significantly earlier. Even when HTML cannot be cached publicly, edge TLS termination, HTTP/3 support, and tiered origin routing cut connection latency on every navigation.
By Arjen Karel · 8,246 crawled Shopify sites (3,818 with desktop Chrome field data, 8,245 sites with an HTML edge CDN, October 2026). How we measured.