The median US B2B homepage scores 59/100 on Google PageSpeed and takes 3.7 seconds to show anything. Benchmarks from 56,005 manufacturers, distributors, and B2B firms.
The median US B2B company homepage scores 59 out of 100 on Google PageSpeed, takes 3.7 seconds to show a visitor anything, and 70.5% take longer than the three-second mark where buyers start leaving (Alkali, analysis of 56,005 US B2B homepages, 2026).
If your homepage scores in the high 50s, you're not behind your peers. You're exactly average. The problem is that average is slow enough to lose buyers.
| Metric | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Median PageSpeed performance score | 59 / 100 | Half of B2B homepages score below 59 |
| Homepages scoring 90 or above | 5.6% | Google's “good” range. About 1 in 18 clear it |
| Homepages scoring below 50 | 26.3% | Google's “poor” range |
| Median first paint | 3.7 seconds | Time before anything appears on screen |
| Longer than 3 seconds to first paint | 70.5% | Past the point where bounce rates climb steeply |
| Longer than 4 seconds to first paint | 41.3% | More than two in five |
| Median Speed Index | 6.3 seconds | Time until the page looks visually complete |
| Median Largest Contentful Paint | 9.3 seconds | Time until the main content finishes loading |
| Largest Contentful Paint slower than 4 seconds | 87% | Almost every site is past Google's LCP threshold |
| Visibly dated design | 49% | Old layouts, small type, decade-old signatures |
| Running WordPress | 43% | The most common platform in the sample |
Google PageSpeed groups scores into three bands: 90 to 100 is good, 50 to 89 needs improvement, and below 50 is poor [2]. Against those bands, the B2B picture is stark. Only 5.6% of the homepages we measured reach the good band, 68% sit in the middle, and 26% fall in poor.
The probability of a visitor bouncing increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds (Google/SOASTA research, 2017) [1]. In our sample, 70.5% of B2B homepages take longer than three seconds to show anything at all.
Put plainly: most B2B websites are slow enough, by Google's own research, to be losing prospects before the page finishes drawing. And the loss is invisible, because a buyer who leaves during a slow load looks identical in analytics to someone who was never interested. It's the same quiet leak that shows up when referrals stop converting: nobody complains, they just don't call.
First paint is when something appears. It is not when the page is usable. The median homepage takes 3.7 seconds to show anything and 6.3 seconds to look visually complete, but the median Largest Contentful Paint, the moment the main content actually finishes loading, is 9.3 seconds. Fully 87% of the sites we measured are past Google's four-second LCP threshold.
So the three-second problem understates it. A buyer who waits out the first flicker of content is often still waiting several seconds more for the thing they came to see. On a phone, on a normal connection, that is where a first-time visitor quietly gives up and goes back to the search results.
Speed is the first impression, not the only one. Alongside the scores, 49% of these homepages read as visibly dated, old layouts, small type, stock imagery, the signature of a site last touched a decade ago. And 43% run on WordPress, where a decade of accumulated plugins and unoptimized images is a common route to a slow, dated page. The platform isn't the villain; the accumulation is. A slow, dated homepage is usually the surface symptom of a deeper mismatch: a site built for a business that no longer exists.
In our experience rebuilding these sites, the slowdown rarely has one dramatic cause. It accumulates: hero images uploaded straight from a camera and never compressed, a slider plugin loading three screens of JavaScript before the page draws, a theme from 2014 still pulling fonts and scripts it no longer uses, and hosting that was a good deal in 2018 and is merely slow now.
Each addition felt small at the time. A 3.7-second median first paint is what a decade of small additions looks like.
Start by measuring. Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights and write down two numbers: the performance score and the first-paint time. The medians on this page tell you where that puts you against your peers.
There's a second reason to care. Page speed has been a factor in Google's mobile search rankings since 2018 [3], and the Core Web Vitals it feeds are part of how Google evaluates page experience [4]. The prospects who never find you in the results are even quieter than the ones who bounce.
If the score sits in the 50s or 60s, the fixes are usually unglamorous: compress the images, remove the plugins nobody remembers installing, and get the top of the homepage loading before everything else. If the deeper problem is a site that no longer matches the business, a rebuild usually beats another round of patches, and it costs less than most owners assume (here's what drives the number). Either way the target is the same: meaningful content on screen in under three seconds, because that's the window where a prospect decides whether to keep reading or go back to the search results.
We measured 56,005 US B2B company homepages (manufacturers, distributors, equipment makers, and specialized service firms) with Google PageSpeed (Lighthouse), recording the performance score, First Contentful Paint, Speed Index, and Largest Contentful Paint for each. Scores use the mobile strategy, because a large share of B2B buyers check suppliers from a phone.
We attempted 61,736 homepages; 56,005 returned a successful score and the rest failed to load or timed out and are excluded. The speed and Core Web Vitals figures are computed from that sample, not estimated. The design and platform figures come from a review of the sample rather than the PageSpeed run. Data collected 2026. The method stays published so the numbers can be checked.
Alkali, “B2B website speed benchmarks,” analysis of 56,005 US B2B company homepages, 2026. https://www.byalkali.com/research/b2b-website-speed-benchmarks/
You're welcome to cite or quote these figures with attribution (CC BY 4.0).
Google treats 90 to 100 as good. In our 2026 sample of 56,005 US B2B homepages, the median score was 59 and only 5.6% reached the good range, so a score above 90 puts a site ahead of about 94% of its peers.
A visitor should see meaningful content in under three seconds. Google's research shows bounce probability rises 32% between one and three seconds of load time, and 70.5% of the B2B homepages we measured miss that mark.
The median performance score across 56,005 US B2B homepages was 59 out of 100 in 2026 (Alkali). Half of all B2B homepages score below that.
It's rarely one dramatic cause. The common profile is a capable site that has accumulated years of additions: uncompressed images, plugins and sliders, an aging theme, and hosting that has fallen behind. Each was small; together they produce a median first paint of 3.7 seconds and a median full load closer to nine.
Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights and note two numbers: the performance score and the first-paint time. Compare them against the medians on this page (59 and 3.7 seconds). If you'd like the read done for you, our complimentary homepage mockup includes it.
From our own measurement of 56,005 US B2B company homepages in 2026 (61,736 attempted, 56,005 successfully scored). Method and sample are described above; nothing is estimated or borrowed from third-party studies.
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