The Reality Check: WooCommerce Speed Distribution
Origin TTFB across 23,030 WooCommerce stores · Desktop only (1920×1080)
Median Origin TTFB
1015ms
50th percentile
Average Origin TTFB
1316ms
Mean across all stores
WooCommerce Sites Tested
23,030
With valid origin TTFB data
Percentile Distribution
| Percentile | Origin TTFB | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| p10 | 414ms | Faster than 90% of stores |
| p25 | 644ms | Faster than 75% of stores |
| p50 (median) | 1015ms | Faster than 50% of stores |
| p75 | 1627ms | Faster than 25% of stores |
| p90 | 2499ms | Faster than 10% of stores |
| p95 | 3281ms | Faster than 5% of stores |
| p99 | 5923ms | Faster than 1% of stores |
Origin TTFB by Percentile
Slow Origin Servers
85.0%19,576 of 23,030 WooCommerce sites have origin TTFB > 500ms
Methodology
Origin TTFB measures the server response time after bypassing CDN/cache layers.
We set WooCommerce cart session cookies (woocommerce_items_in_cart,
woocommerce_cart_hash,
wp_woocommerce_session_*) to force
cache-busting requests that reach the origin server.
This reveals actual server performance rather than cached response times, making it useful for identifying hosting and optimization issues. Sites with edge caching (Cloudflare, LiteSpeed, etc.) will show much lower homepage TTFB but similar origin TTFB to uncached sites on the same hosting.
For reference: Average homepage TTFB (cached) is 856ms, average cart page TTFB is 1305ms.