2021

Web Almanac

HTTP Archive’s annual
state of the web report

Our mission is to combine the raw stats and trends of the HTTP Archive with the expertise of the web community. The Web Almanac is a comprehensive report on the state of the web, backed by real data and trusted web experts. The 2021 edition is comprised of 24 chapters spanning aspects of page content, user experience, publishing, and distribution.

Start exploring

Featured Chapter

Resource Hints

Resource hints are akin to fine-tuning a race car’s engine. They would not turn a slow engine into a fast one, and too many adjustments could break it. Yet, some small tweaks here and there would allow you to maximize it.

44.3%

Adoption of preload in the top 1,000 websites

21.5%

Unused preload hints within the first 3 seconds

423%

Growth in adoption of native lazy loading on images

Read the Resource Hints chapter

Contributors

The Web Almanac has been made possible by the hard work of the web community. 122 people have volunteered countless hours in the planning, research, writing and production phases of the 2021 Web Almanac.

See the contributors

Methodology

Websites Tested

8.2M

Data Processed

39.5 TB

Unless otherwise noted, the metrics in all of the 24 chapters of the 2021 Web Almanac are sourced from the HTTP Archive dataset. HTTP Archive is a community-run project that has been tracking how the web is built since 2010. Using WebPageTest and Lighthouse under the hood, metadata about nearly 8.2 million websites are tested monthly and included in a public BigQuery database for analysis. The July 2021 dataset was used as the basis for the 2021 Web Almanac’s metrics. For more information, see the Methodology page.

Learn about our Methodology