Website response time: Difference between `Load` and `Finish`

Question

I needed to check a webpage's response time, so I visited the site on Chrome, opened Devtools and switched to the Network tab to check the response time:

As you can see, there are two times: The first one is Finish and the second one is Load.

I think Finish is the time taken to load the whole page with all the resources including delays, but what is Load? I thought if I add all these times together I would get the time for Load but this isn't the case.

What would be considered the response time of this website, Load or Finish?

Diaphone

Answer 1

The Finish time in Chrome Devtools includes the asynchronously loading (non blocking) objects/elements on the page which may continue downloading way after the onLoad event for the page has fired.

The response time for a website generally means the Load time, because that is user perceivable, and at this point user can see that the browser has finished loading and page is ready on their screen.

The Finish time, although technically also a response time, doesn't have as much end-user implication.

In some cases, it seems that the Finish timer never stops but continues increasing, so it may not be the best assessment of web page response time.

Insulate

It's not quite right to say that the finish time "doesn't have as much end-user implication". For example the page could have loaded all its elements but show a spinner because it is waiting on data back from request. The page has "loaded" but from the user's view isn't "finished" and is definitely not usable. – Yoshieyoshiko

You are technically correct, if requests are flying back and forth between browser and various endpoints, page isn't done. Current web design is firmly in category; there are always outstanding requests and pages continually exchanging data. 'Page load' has lost meaning. – Insulate

Answer 2

Technically speaking, the difference between the load time and the finish time is that load time loads the elements whatever needed to load the web content on the page, but the finish time is that it will try to access all the ajax calls needed(Dynamic content loading while being on the same page). Considering the finish time as response time is not good. To calculate the response time we need to consider the load time, Because i am currently working on the page loading issue itself.

Trachytic

Answer 3

DevTools displays the timing of the DOMContentLoaded and load events in multiple places on the Network panel. The DOMContentLoaded event is colored blue, and the load event is red.

https://i.sstatic.net/unni3.png

Abrams

He didn't ask about DomContentLoaded, but instead did ask for Finish, which you haven't addressed. – Thundersquall

Information provided is not what is asked – Neutralization