{"id":637,"slug":"wordpress-median-js-528kb-counterintuitive","title":"WordPress median mobile JS payload is 528 KB — smaller than Wix (1,462 KB) and Squarespace (1,314 KB), yet WordPress performs worse in the field","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["core-web-vitals","wordpress","page-builders"],"reference_body":"**Claim (2024 + 2025 Web Almanac, CMS chapter, Fig. 12.12):**\n\n| CMS | Median mobile JS (KB) | Median desktop JS (KB) | Lighthouse mobile (2023→2024→2025) |\n|---|---|---|---|\n| WordPress | **528** | 565 | 33 → 38 → 41 |\n| Wix | 1,462 | 1,461 | ~50 → 55 → 64 |\n| Squarespace | 1,314 | 1,309 | – → ~30 → 32 |\n| Drupal | 471 | 479 | – → ~38 → 40 |\n| Joomla | 386 | 409 | – → ~38 → 40 |\n| Webflow | n/a (not broken out 2024) | – | n/a → n/a → 58 |\n| Duda | (not in JS chart) | – | – → 59 → 57 |\n| Shopify | – | – | – → – → 52 |\n\n**Confidence:** Verified.\n\n**Diagnostic punchline:** WordPress ships *less* JavaScript at the median than Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify — yet performs worse in the field. The \"WordPress is heavy\" intuition is wrong at the median; what's heavy is **TTFB plus the long-tail distribution** (75th-90th-percentile WordPress sites drag the platform mean down).\n\n**Why this matters for sales:** never tell a client \"WordPress is slow because it's bloated JavaScript.\" The honest answer is \"the typical WordPress configuration on commodity hosting fails CWV\" — see [[wordpress-cwv-causal-attribution-2026]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"wordpress-cwv-causal-attribution-2026","title":"WordPress CWV gap causal decomposition (May 2026): ~40-50% hosting/TTFB, ~20-30% page builders, ~15-20% plugins, ~5-10% core, ~5-10% theme","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T21:23:33.790Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T21:23:33.790Z"}