This translation has not been editorially reviewed yet. The German version is authoritative. Deutsche Fassung →
Checking FCP: when the first pixel of content appears
First Contentful Paint measures when any content first becomes visible at all — text, an image, or graphics. Together with the server response time, it separates two quite different causes: the server takes a long time, or the browser isn't getting around to drawing.
- If FCP sits close above TTFB, the browser is working briskly and the bottleneck is the server. If there's a big gap, something is blocking rendering — usually stylesheets or scripts loaded in the page head.
- A common case is an embedded font that holds up text rendering. The browser has the text, but it's waiting on the file.
