The State of Web Vitals

Third parties per page

How many distinct third-party services the page embeds.

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

At a glance the headline numbers for Third parties per page

How many distinct third-party services the page embeds.

3
on the typical site
half of sites sit at or below
6
1 in 4 sites exceed this
the top quarter
14
the heaviest 1%
the long tail
94,910
sites measured
all-device field data

The typical site embeds 3 distinct third-party services.

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

Distribution & median CLS site count and median CLS at each level of third parties per page

0.00 0.04 0.08 0.11 0.15
0.1
0 9050 18100
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7–8 9–10 11–13 >p98
Good (≤0.1) Needs improvement Poor (>0.25) Site count
The State of Web Vitals · Q1 2026 · 94,910 sites · all devices field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
3

Passing CLS by third parties per page which level passes the CLS most often

Third parties per pageSitesPassing CLSCLS
0 18,100 90% 0.00
1 12,836 90% 0.00
2 9,835 89% 0.00
3 7,068 88% 0.00
4 8,288 88% 0.00
5 8,497 88% 0.00
6 7,766 88% 0.00
7–8 11,251 85% 0.01
9–10 5,931 85% 0.01
11–13 3,917 83% 0.02
>p98 1,421 80% 0.02
Good Needs Improvement Poor Faded rows: under 100 sites

Third parties per page 3. p75 6. p99 14. At the low end (0): CLS 0.00. At the high end (>p98): CLS 0.02. computed

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

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

Every third party on the page is code you invited but do not control. Each one adds connections, main-thread work, or both. The count is the simplest measure of how much of your page's fate is outsourced.

Counts only creep upwards. Tags get added for a campaign and survive it by years. Walk the list and remove every service nobody can name a reader for. Most sites can drop several without anyone noticing anything except better vitals.

How do third parties affect the Core Web Vitals?

Third parties correlate with the LCP. With a couple of services, 88% of sites pass the LCP. On the most tag-heavy sites, 77% do. Third parties have little causal relationship with the LCP. That makes having many third parties more likely a result or an indication of a slow, heavily built site than a cause of a slow one.

Go fix it The case for limiting analytics and tracking scripts → Third-party domains →
Related signals JS framework → Cookie wall detected → CMS → Analytics on page → Chrome field data from 94,910 sites, representing millions of real page loads · How we measured