The State of Web Vitals

Speculation eagerness

How eager the winning speculation rule is, from conservative to immediate.

Field data PhoneDesktopAll Scope All sites Q1 2026 edition · Desktop field outcomes
Metric LCP INP CLS
1

At a glance the headline numbers for Speculation eagerness

How eager the winning speculation rule is, from conservative to immediate.

5
Categories
94,890 sites
65.0%
Top share
none
1.3s
Top LCP
Median for none

0.6% of sites speculate on hover. 31.5% wait for the press.

The State of Web Vitals · Q1 2026 · 94,910 sites · desktop field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
2

Speculation eagerness who uses what, and how fast each group loads

Median LCP
0
0.5s
1s
1.5s
2s
2.5s
3s
3.5s
4s
eager1.2s3% of sites
none1.3s65% of sites
moderate1.4s1% of sites
immediate1.6s0% of sites
conservative1.7s32% of sites
VariantShare of sitesMedian
eager 2,693 sites
3%
1.2s
none 61,678 sites
65%
1.3s
moderate 564 sites
1%
1.4s
immediate 74 sites
0%
1.6s
conservative 29,881 sites
32%
1.7s

Eager sites post the best median LCP (1.2s). Conservative sites trail at 1.7s. Correlation, not causation. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q1 2026 · 94,910 sites · desktop field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
3

Passing LCP per speculation eagerness which group passes the LCP most often

VariantSitesPassing LCPLCP
Immediate 0.1% 74 93% 1.6s
Eager 2.8% 2,693 91% 1.2s
None 65% 61,678 89% 1.3s
Moderate 0.6% 564 87% 1.4s
Conservative 31.5% 29,881 77% 1.7s
Good Needs Improvement Poor Sorted best-passing first · median colored by its own rating · pass = good LCP (2.5s at p75) · one value per site

91% of Eager sites pass LCP. Conservative trails 14 points behind. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q1 2026 · 94,910 sites · desktop field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
4

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

Eagerness is the trigger: when speculation starts. Conservative waits for the press, the moment between pointer-down and the completed click. Moderate starts on hover. Eager and immediate speculate before any signal, trading wasted loads for a longer head start.

Conservative is close to free: it only speculates on links the visitor is touching, and the press-to-click gap is head start nobody misses. Turn eagerness up only where the next click is predictable, like a paginated flow or a checkout funnel.

How does this affect the Core Web Vitals?

Speculation eagerness correlates with the LCP. With Eager, 91% of sites pass the LCP. With Conservative, 77% do. The causal link is weak: the choice mostly marks what kind of site made it.

The split is bigger on CLS. With Eager, 96% of sites pass it. With Conservative, 78% do.

Go fix it Speculation rules → The prerender-until-script speculation rule →
Related signals Speculation posture → Chrome field data from 94,910 sites, representing millions of real page loads · How we measured