The State of Web Vitals

Speculation posture

The strongest speculation rule the document declares: none, prefetch, prerender-until-script, prerender.

Field data PhoneDesktopAll Scope All sites Q2 2026 edition · All devices field outcomes
Metric LCP INP CLS
1

At a glance the headline numbers for Speculation posture

The strongest speculation rule the document declares: none, prefetch, prerender-until-script, prerender.

4
Categories
185,226 sites
65.7%
Top share
none
87ms
Top INP
Median for none

65.7% of sites declare no speculation rules at all.

The State of Web Vitals · Q2 2026 · 189,915 sites · all devices field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
2

Speculation posture who uses what, and how fast each group loads

Median INP
0
100ms
200ms
300ms
400ms
500ms
prerender_until_script71ms0% of sites
prefetch85ms34% of sites
none87ms66% of sites
prerender90ms1% of sites
VariantShare of sitesMedian
prerender_until_script 491 sites
0%
71ms
prefetch 62,089 sites
34%
85ms
none 121,738 sites
66%
87ms
prerender 908 sites
1%
90ms

Little daylight between the groups: every variant sits near 71ms median INP. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q2 2026 · 189,915 sites · all devices field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
3

Passing INP per speculation posture which group passes the INP most often

VariantSitesPassing INPINP
Prefetch 33.5% 62,089 98% 85ms
Prerender until script 0.3% 491 98% 71ms
Prerender 0.5% 908 94% 90ms
None 65.7% 121,738 93% 87ms
Good Needs Improvement Poor Sorted best-passing first · median colored by its own rating · pass = good INP (200ms at p75) · one value per site

98% of Prefetch sites pass INP. None trails 5 points behind. computed

The State of Web Vitals · Q2 2026 · 189,915 sites · all devices field datacorewebvitals.io/state-of-cwv
4

Why this matters for the Core Web Vitals, and where to start fixing it

Speculation rules let the browser start the next navigation before the click. Prefetch downloads the next document ahead of time. Prerender goes further and builds the whole next page in a hidden renderer, so navigating to it is a swap instead of a load. Prerender-until-script is the cautious middle: build the page, hold the scripts.

Done right, the next page's LCP is near-instant because it painted before the visitor arrived. The cost is speculative work: prerendering pages nobody visits burns server and client resources. That trade is what eagerness controls.

How does this affect the Core Web Vitals?

Speculation posture correlates with the INP. With Prefetch, 98% of sites pass the INP. With None, 93% do. The causal link is weak: the choice mostly marks what kind of site made it.

The split is bigger on LCP. With Prerender until script, 95% of sites pass it. With Prefetch, 73% do.

Go fix it Speculation rules → The prerender-until-script speculation rule → View transitions and web performance →
Related signals Speculation eagerness → Chrome field data from 189,915 sites, representing millions of real page loads · How we measured