The State of Web Vitals

Connection and preload hints and the Core Web Vitals

12.9% of audited sites (25,979) combine preconnect and preload hints (83% good LCP, 1.6s median), while 13.6% rely solely on legacy dns-prefetch hints (70% good LCP, 1.9s median).

Field data PhoneDesktopAll Scope All sites October 2026 edition · Phone field outcomes

41.8% of sites use no resource hints connection and preload hints, and 85% of those sites have a good LCP, against 82% of all sites.

The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 126,761 with phone field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
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LCP pass rate

Sites with no resource hints connection and preload hints have a good LCP most often: 85%, against 82% of all sites. Sites with only dns-prefetch hints connection hints have it least often, at 70%.

SitesGood, needs improvement, poor LCPMedian
All sites126,76182%1.6s
No resource hints 41.8%52,80485%1.4s
Both preconnect and preload 12.9%17,41283%1.6s
Preload without preconnect 16.2%21,06082%1.6s
Preconnect without preload 15.5%18,53279%1.6s
DNS-prefetch only 13.6%15,47470%1.9s
GoodNeeds improvementPoorSites: with Chrome field data
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 126,761 with phone field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
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Connection and preload hints usage

No resource hints is the most used: 41.8% of sites.

No resource hints 41.8% Preload without preconnect 16.2% Preconnect without preload 15.5% DNS-prefetch only 13.6% Both preconnect and preload 12.9%
No resource hints 41.8% Preload without preconnect 16.2% Preconnect without preload 15.5% DNS-prefetch only 13.6% Both preconnect and preload 12.9%
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 126,761 with phone field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
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The four LCP phases

Across the four LCP sub-parts in Chrome's field data, the largest gap between no resource hints and only dns-prefetch hints sits in time to first byte (TTFB): 622 ms median for no resource hints against 1094 ms for only dns-prefetch hints. Overall median field LCP is 1.4s for no resource hints (TTFB 622 ms, load delay 280 ms, load duration 137 ms, render delay 215 ms) versus 1.9s for only dns-prefetch hints.

Median LCP phase breakdown (Chrome field p75) Load delay Median LCP
Sites with connection and preload hints 91,427649 ms336 ms236 ms336 mslab 326 ms1.6s
No resource hints 37,305622 ms280 ms215 ms280 mslab 269 ms1.4s
Preload without preconnect 15,892645 ms341 ms233 ms341 mslab 337 ms1.6s
DNS-prefetch only 11,0121094 ms360 ms242 ms360 mslab 350 ms1.9s
Preconnect without preload 13,267606 ms370 ms250 ms370 mslab 361 ms1.6s
Both preconnect and preload 13,951550 ms430 ms284 ms430 mslab 425 ms1.6s
TTFB Resource load delay Resource load time Element render delay
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 126,761 with phone field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
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Understanding connection and preload hints

Why targeted preload and preconnect beat legacy dns-prefetch

dns-prefetch only resolves the domain name, leaving TCP and TLS handshakes on the critical path. Pairing preconnect on critical asset CDNs with preload on the LCP image eliminates both connection and discovery delay. Across 25,979 sites (12.9%) pairing preconnect and preload, 83% pass field LCP (1.6s median), compared with 70% (1.9s median) on the 13.6% using dns-prefetch alone.

Use <link rel="preload"> for late-discovered hero images or critical fonts, and limit <link rel="preconnect"> to the 2 to 4 third-party origins needed on the critical path. Across all audited sites, 12.9% combine preconnect and preload (83% good LCP, 1.6s median) versus 13.6% with dns-prefetch only (70% good LCP, 1.9s median).

Go fix it Guide to resource prioritization → Preload the LCP image → When preloading stylesheets does not make sense → 103 Early Hints →
The State of Web Vitals · October 2026 · 210,902 crawled sites · 126,761 with phone field data · 201,622 sites with connection and preload hintsBy Arjen Karel · corewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
Platform & Framework Takeaways

How connection and preload hints plays out per platform

What the field data shows when you isolate a single CMS or framework.

WordPress 65,509 sites
35% sites with dns-prefetch only

35% of WordPress sites emit only dns-prefetch connection hints.

WordPress core prints resource hints in <head> with wp_resource_hints(), populating dns-prefetch from registered script and style hosts. Across WordPress, 35% of sites ship only dns-prefetch (68% LCP pass rate), 16% use preload (72%), and 23% emit no hints (74%).

Explore WordPress resource hints data →
React 9,570 sites
92% vs 59% good LCP (preload vs dns-prefetch)

62% of React sites emit preload hints (92% good LCP vs 59% on dns-prefetch only).

Across React sites, 62% emit preload hints (92% good LCP, 1.2s median) compared with 9% emitting dns-prefetch only (59% good LCP, 2.3s median).

Explore React resource hints data →
Related signals Cacheable responses → Last-Modified present → Requests via CDN → HTML size (kB) → By Arjen Karel · 210,902 crawled sites (126,761 with phone Chrome field data, 201,622 sites with connection and preload hints, October 2026) · How we measured