EngineeringScore

Free GTmetrix alternative

GTmetrix grades page performance and grades it better than we do, with a waterfall, a filmstrip, connection throttling and field data from real Chrome users. EngineeringScore reports bytes, requests and one load milestone for that same URL, and in the same run tells you about its response headers, its cookies, its SEO tags and its accessibility. Wider scan, shallower on speed: that is the whole trade.

What we don't replace

  • Video capture of the load. The GTmetrix features page lists Video Playback among its analysis options, described as experiencing what your visitors experience through video playback of your page load, and its home page lists a Speed Visualization (Filmstrip) among what a report contains. We produce words and numbers.
  • Waterfall depth. The GTmetrix features page describes a chart showing how long each request took and in what order, with request and response header details, CDN cache status and IP per request, filterable by request type and sortable by status code, size or domain. We record bytes, status and negotiated protocol per request and stop there.
  • Throttled connections and device simulation. The GTmetrix features page describes connection throttling for testing multiple connection speeds, and its home page says a page can be tested on over 55 simulated device options and that unlocking those mobile and tablet devices needs GTmetrix PRO. Our load time is one unthrottled desktop Chromium visit.
  • Field data from your actual visitors. The GTmetrix features page describes Core Web Vitals from the Chrome User Experience Report over a 28-day collection period, with history as far back as 6 months. One synthetic scan cannot produce that, and our free speed test page says so rather than leaving it to be assumed.
  • A monitored URL with a history behind it. The GTmetrix features page describes testing a page automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis with graphs of GTmetrix Grade, Performance and Structure scores, page size and request count over time, plus email alerts when a page dips against conditions you set. Every scan here is a one-off.
  • Choosing where in the world the test runs. The GTmetrix features page lists 25 global test locations and says reaching all of them takes GTmetrix PRO, while its account features page gives a free account Seattle and London. We scan from wherever our servers happen to be.

What we replace

  • Performance grading and asset breakdown for one URL: total transferred bytes split by asset class, request count judged against the protocol the page's own requests actually negotiated, images over 300,000 bytes, text assets served without compression, static assets served without Cache-Control, and the browser's own load milestone.
  • Everything on the page that is not performance, in the same report and the same minute: response headers and whether HTTPS and the redirect behave, cookies and their attributes, on-page SEO tags, and an accessibility run against the rendered DOM.
  • Telling apart the oversized images worth converting from the ones already converted. When every image over the threshold is already WebP or AVIF, the advice switches from re-export the format to resize or compress harder, rather than sending you after a step you have already done.
  • A check with no account attached. The GTmetrix home page runs a test without a login but shows Log in to Change Options beside its analysis settings; here those settings do not exist at all, which is a smaller offer honestly described.

Where GTmetrix is stronger

  • GTmetrix is a performance tool proper and this is not one. Its home page describes a report built on Lighthouse metrics and audits, Web Vitals including LCP, TBT and CLS, real user metrics from CrUX, a waterfall, video, report history and a speed visualisation filmstrip.
  • GTmetrix gives a lot of that away. Its account features page lists testing from Seattle and London, a dashboard with tags, filters and saved views, daily, weekly or monthly monitoring with performance history graphs, and email alerts when a page dips, on a free account with no card, and it offers 5 GTmetrix tests every month for 3 months to start with.
  • GTmetrix Structure audits look at things we never measure. Its features page says they tell you whether a page follows modern delivery practices, including which JS and CSS files slow the load and which elements cause layout shifts. We do not measure layout shift at all.
  • GTmetrix scores against Lighthouse, the same engine behind much of the tooling a developer already trusts. Our thresholds are our own: published per check on our free tool pages, but calibrated by us and not against anybody else's rubric.
  • GTmetrix keeps testing after you close the tab. Its features page describes scheduled daily, weekly or monthly monitoring and CrUX history, and its home page says it sends an alert when your page underperforms, including if the page fails to generate a report at all. A scan run once on request stands in for none of that.

Where we're stronger

  • One URL, several subjects, one report. Performance, response headers, cookies, on-page SEO and accessibility come back together for the page you gave us, instead of one tool per question and a tab for each.

  • Compression and caching are checked against your own assets only. Uncompressed HTML, script and stylesheet responses count when they are first-party and above a 1,000-byte floor, since compression overhead can make a tiny response larger, with one deliberate exception: a response whose size never came through, because it was chunked or streamed, is counted regardless of the floor rather than waved past as small. The static-caching check draws the same boundary, looking at images, scripts and stylesheets you serve yourself. A vendor CDN's configuration is never reported as your defect.

  • On security headers the depth is stated rather than implied: HSTS and Referrer-Policy are judged on their values, with an HSTS max-age floor of 15,552,000 seconds on sites served over HTTPS and a Referrer-Policy failure on unsafe-url, Content-Security-Policy is judged on which header name carried it and not on how strict its directives are, and the rest are presence tests that our free tool pages name one by one.

  • A reader who does not already know the vocabulary can still act on the report. Each finding carries its meaning, its stakes and the change to make, plus a link to a dedicated written guide where one exists for that check.

  • Each of our free tool pages carries a section on what that scan cannot see. The speed one is the bluntest of them, because it is where the gaps against a tool built for this are widest.

Sources

Every claim about GTmetrix on this page was read on from GTmetrix's own public pages. Their product changes and this page does not change with it, so treat the date as the claim's expiry, not its publication.

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