Google PageSpeed Insights versus Google Lighthouse

Saturday, March 18th 2023

Google PageSpeed Insights and Google Lighthouse are both tools created by Google to help website owners and developers improve the performance and user experience of their websites, but they have different focuses and capabilities.

Google PageSpeed Insights analyzes a website's performance from a user's perspective, measuring how quickly a page loads and how long it takes to become interactive. It also provides suggestions for improving performance based on best practices established by Google.

Google Lighthouse, on the other hand, provides a more comprehensive analysis of a website's performance and user experience. In addition to performance metrics like page load time and time to interactive, Lighthouse also analyzes accessibility, SEO, and best practices for web development.

Lighthouse also allows users to run audits for specific device types (desktop or mobile), network conditions, and more. Additionally, Lighthouse can be run locally, while PageSpeed Insights is only available through a web interface.

Overall, Google PageSpeed Insights is a great tool for quickly checking the performance of a website from a user's perspective and getting some general recommendations for improvement. Google Lighthouse is a more comprehensive tool that provides more detailed insights and can be used for more in-depth analysis and optimization.