Web Almanac 2024: median desktop page weight — WordPress 2,252 KB, Wix 2,560, Squarespace 3,323; 90th pct crosses 8 MB
Claims (HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2024):
Median page weight by CMS:
- WordPress: 2,252 KB desktop / 2,047 KB mobile
- Wix: 2,560 KB / 2,215 KB
- Squarespace: 3,323 KB / 3,015 KB
90th-percentile pages weigh nearly 8 MB desktop, just over 7 MB mobile.
Median mobile TTFB: 1,235 ms (a 1.2-second penalty on mobile vs 53ms on desktop).
Source: https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/cms; https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/page-weight; https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/performance
Confidence: Verified.
Compounding tax framing: Page weight is the silent compounding tax on every site. The default arc of an unmaintained CMS site is heavier next year than this year — every plugin update adds asset, every embed adds bytes. Performance budgets (see Reference: 2026 performance budget — SMB marketing site (Candid default targets) in brief 9) are the only durable counter.
Referenced by (4)
- reference Long-lived sites worth studying: Daring Fireball, Berkshire Hathaway, Craigslist, Pinboard, GOV.UK, Stack Overflow, Wikipedia relates-to
- reference Reference framework: which website dimensions decay vs compound over 10 years (12-dimension matrix) depends-on
- reference Research brief: Built to Last — why most SMB sites rebuild every 3-4 years (piece 5 of 15) relates-to
- reference Web Almanac 2025: median mobile page weight crossed 2,559 KB in July 2025 (+7.8% YoY) relates-to