Brendan Tully0 Comments
September 28, 2026
GTmetrix was the default speed test for a long time. Plug in a URL, get a grade and a waterfall, send the report to your developer. It’s still a good tool, but it isn’t the free, no-login test it used to be: reports have needed an account since GTmetrix changed its plans at the end of 2023, the old free plan has been replaced by a trial, and the cheapest paid plan (Lite, US$4.99 a month billed yearly) gives you 50 tests a month from 5 locations.
So if you’re looking for a GTmetrix alternative, you’re in good company. We run speed tests every week as part of SEO audits and site speed work, and these are the tools we actually use, what each one is good for, and where each one can mislead you.
Every tool below falls into one of two camps, and mixing them up is the most common mistake we see.
The targets for passing Core Web Vitals are LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds (INP replaced First Input Delay in March 2024) and CLS under 0.1. A tool that only gives you a lab grade can’t tell you whether you pass. That’s why several of the alternatives below are more useful than GTmetrix for SEO work, not just cheaper.
Best for: WordPress sites, and anyone who needs to test from the country their customers are in.
Full disclosure: this one is built by our sister company, WP Speed Fix. It loads your page in a real Chrome browser from any of 18 locations (Sydney, London, Los Angeles, Virginia, Toronto, Frankfurt, Singapore, Mumbai, Dubai, Sao Paulo and more) and puts the result next to Google’s real visitor Core Web Vitals, with a plain pass or fail verdict at the top.
Where it differs from GTmetrix is the advice. Instead of generic Lighthouse audits, recommendations come from a rules engine built from optimizing more than 5,000 WordPress sites, so it flags slow hosting, admin-ajax bloat, missing lazy loading and other WordPress-specific issues, then puts the top three fixes first. You also get a sortable waterfall, an SEO check of your titles and social share tags, a shareable report link and 12 months of test history per domain.
Best for: checking what Google actually sees.
PageSpeed Insights shows your real visitor Core Web Vitals from CrUX at the top of the report (for the URL, or for the whole site if the page doesn’t have enough traffic), then a Lighthouse lab test underneath with the familiar score out of 100.
Worth knowing: a huge number of speed test tools are simply a wrapper around PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse. Different branding, same engine, same score, same recommendations. If two tools give you near-identical advice, that’s why.
Best for: deep technical diagnosis when you need to know exactly what’s happening.
WebPageTest runs real browsers from locations and connection speeds you choose, with the most detailed waterfall and filmstrip of any tool here. It’s owned by Catchpoint, which is now part of LogicMonitor, and anonymous visitors get a limited view, so you’ll want a free account to use it properly.
Best for: teams that want lab tests, Google data and real user monitoring in one product.
DebugBear’s free website speed test needs no signup and shows a lab test in real Chrome, Lighthouse audits, a waterfall and your Google CrUX data side by side. The paid product adds scheduled monitoring, with plans from US$49 a month billed yearly, and real user monitoring from the Startup plan up.
Best for: testing from lots of locations at once.
SpeedVitals reports LCP, CLS and TBT in the lab alongside real-world data, and can batch test a page from many locations in one go, which is a quick way to spot a CDN or hosting problem in a particular region. The free plan gives you 15 tests a week from 10 locations, plus one daily monitor.
Best for: a fast, no-fuss check from a real browser.
Uptrends’ free speed test runs real Chrome or Edge, on desktop or mobile, from 10 free locations and gives you a waterfall. Paid monitoring starts from US$42 a month billed yearly.
Best for: developers who want an instant test on their own machine.
Lighthouse is built into Chrome. Open DevTools, choose the Lighthouse tab and run a report. It’s the same engine as PageSpeed Insights’ lab test (and GTmetrix’s score), so it’s a free way to get the same numbers without leaving your browser.
Best for: a simple load time number for non-technical people.
Pingdom is the tool most people try after GTmetrix, and it’s still free with 7 test locations (Tokyo, Frankfurt, London, Washington DC, San Francisco, Sydney and Sao Paulo). It gives you a performance grade, load time, page size, request count and a waterfall.
Honestly, it’s showing its age. It doesn’t report Core Web Vitals, so a great Pingdom grade tells you very little about how Google sees your site. We’d only use it for a quick waterfall.
Best for: sites that already run through Cloudflare.
If your site is on Cloudflare, you already have a free real user monitoring tool. Web Analytics measures LCP, INP and CLS from your real visitors, and its Debug View lists the page elements doing the most damage to each metric. For proxied sites the tracking script is injected automatically. Observatory, in the Speed section of the dashboard, adds Lighthouse lab tests next to that real user data.
Best for: monitoring Core Web Vitals page by page, including carts and checkouts.
Another one from our own stable. Google’s Core Web Vitals data is a 28-day average, often grouped across similar pages, so problems can cost you traffic and conversions for weeks before they show up in Search Console. Vital Signs Tracker collects the same metrics from your visitors’ browsers and reports daily, per page, broken down by country, device, traffic source and logged-in versus logged-out users.
It also explains why a metric is failing: LCP split into server time, load time and render delay, the element and interaction behind a slow INP, and the element causing layout shift. Plans start at US$29 a month for one site.
Run one page through five tools and you’ll get five answers. That’s normal. The differences come from:
Pick one lab tool for troubleshooting, stick with it so your before and after numbers are comparable, and judge success on real visitor data.
Passing Core Web Vitals won’t rank a page on its own, but failing them can hold back a site that’s doing everything else right, and a slow site wastes the traffic you already have. We cover how much speed really matters in How Site Speed Actually Impacts SEO, and our wider roundup of website speed test tools covers the basics.
If your site is on WordPress and failing Core Web Vitals, our sister company WP Speed Fix specialises in fixing exactly that.
Not in the way it used to be. GTmetrix now requires an account and offers a free trial rather than a free plan. Paid plans start at US$4.99 a month billed yearly for 50 tests a month.
For WordPress sites, SiteSpeedBot: real Chrome, 18 locations, Google field data and WordPress-specific fixes with no signup. For any site, PageSpeed Insights, because it shows Google’s own Core Web Vitals data.
Not for SEO. Pingdom doesn’t report Core Web Vitals, while GTmetrix shows Lighthouse lab metrics and, for sites with enough traffic, Google’s field data. Pingdom is fine for a quick waterfall.
No. Google uses Core Web Vitals field data from real Chrome users. The score out of 100 is a lab score to help you diagnose problems.
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