# The Performance Inequality Gap, 2026

DevFeed: [The Performance Inequality Gap, 2026](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-performance-inequality-gap-2026-26562.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-2026/>)

Author: Alex Russell

Published: 2025-11-24T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Alex Russell](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/alex-russell.md>)

Topics: [Web Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web-development.md>), [JavaScript](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/javascript.md>), [Front end](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/frontend.md>), [Core Web Vitals](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/core-web-vitals.md>), [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [Network](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/network.md>), [TLS (Transport Layer Security)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tls.md>)

Tags: [2026](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/2026.md>), [core-web-vitals](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/core-web-vitals.md>), [cpu](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cpu.md>), [devices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/devices.md>), [doom](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/doom.md>), [frontend](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/frontend.md>), [javascript](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/javascript.md>), [mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mobile.md>), [network](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/network.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [tls](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tls.md>), [webdev](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/webdev.md>)

## AI overview

This article updates network and device assumptions for 2026 and derives resource budgets for three- and five-second page loads. It argues that growing page sizes and JavaScript payloads worsen performance inequality, while noting that fewer than half of mobile origins pass Core Web Vitals.

## Source excerpt

The Budget, 2026 Edition Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Updated network test parameters for 2026 are: 9 Mbps downlink 3 mbps uplink 100 millisecond RTT Regarding devices, my updated recommendations are the Samsung Galaxy A24 4G (or equivalent) and the HP 14. The goal of these recommendations is to emulate a 75th percentile user experience, meaning a full quarter of devices and networks will perform worse than this baseline. Plugging these parameters into the updated budget calculator, we can derive critical-path resource thresholds for three and five second page load targets. Per usual, we consider pages built in two styles: JS-light, where only 15% of critical-path bytes are JavaScript, and JS-heavy, comprised of 50% JavaScript: Time JS-light (MiB) JS-heavy Total JS Other Total JS Other 3 sec 2.0 0.3 1.7 1.2 0.62 0.62 5 sec 3.7 0.57 3.2 2.3 1.15 1.15 Note: Budgets account for two TLS connections. Many sites initiate more early connections, reducing time available to download resources. Using four connections cuts the three-second budget by 350 KiB, to 1.5 MiB / 935 KiB. The five-second budget loses nearly half a megabyte, dropping to 3.2 / 1.9 MiB. It pays to adopt H/2 or H/3 and consolidate connections. These budgets are extremely generous. Even the target of three seconds is lavish; most sites should be able to put up interactive content much sooner for nearly all users. Meanwhile, sites are ballooning. The median mobile page is now 2.6 MiB, blowing past the size of DOOM (2.48 MiB) in April. The 75th percentile site is now larger than two copies of DOOM. P90+ sites are more than 4.5x larger, and sizes at each point have doubled over the past decade. Put another way, the median mobile page is now 70 times larger than the total storage of the computer that landed men on the moon. Median page weights are more than 2.5x larger for mobile sites than a decade ago, and sites at the 75th percentile are now 4x their 2015 weight. An outsized contributor to this bloat co