Catchpoint Upgrades WebPageTest API

April 8, 2021

WebPageTest API (WPT API) which was previously limited to a small number of users has been upgraded with deeper performance metrics, immediate test results, dedicated support, developer resources, and CI/CD integrations.

The enhanced WPT API provides direct and programmatic access to WebPageTest data and test infrastructure, which is the industry’s de-facto web performance testing solution. WPT offers in-depth front-end performance metrics and side-by-side video comparisons of user experience from the latest browsers around the world.

“We’re thrilled to make the WebPageTest API available to the entire development community,” says Mehdi Daoudi, CEO, Catchpoint. “It will be exciting to see the ways developers leverage the API’s flexibility to optimize site performance and integrate page speed metrics into their development workflow.”

Continuous Delivery of Faster Web Pages
The API’s portability enables developers to run performance tests from simulated user environments without leaving their CI/CD tool to continuously deliver fast web pages.

Catchpoint launched their official GitHub Action for WebPageTest, making it possible for developers to test their code changes against performance budgets and get detailed performance information right in their existing workflow.

“Having WebPageTest data integrated with your CI/CD process brings performance into the development conversation, ensuring sites meet speed and usability standards before they’re released and experienced by users in production,” says Patrick Meenan, Founder of WebPageTest and Engineering Fellow at Catchpoint. “Developers will benefit from shortened feedback loops, accelerated delivery, and deeper performance visibility at all stages of development.”

Deeper Performance Investigations, Automated
In addition to development integration, the WebPageTest API also provides tremendous value to performance engineers and technical SEO consultants, who can now automate deeper performance investigations and audits to surface new opportunities to improve site performance.

“WebPageTest is the industry standard for page load performance analysis. Being able to isolate individual factors with high confidence and repeatability makes it easy to pinpoint and communicate how incremental changes can improve things for the better,” says Alex Russell, Software Engineer, Google Chrome. “The best professional web performance investigators I know use WPT as a critical part of their workflows, and it's the center of mine.”

Supporting a long-term Core Web Vitals strategy
The need to push page load times even faster is underscored by Google’s plans to incorporate performance indicators, Core Web Vitals, into their search ranking algorithm starting in May 2021. With lucrative search traffic at stake, Core Web Vitals metrics have become a universal barometer of performance and top-down organizational imperative.

“WebPageTest highlights the factors impacting Core Web Vitals so developers can optimize the performance and subsequently, search ranking, of their top pages,” Says Tim Kadlec, Performance Engineering Fellow at Catchpoint. “Enforcing Core Web Vitals performance budgets within your release process ensures all future pages are high-performing in the long-term.”

3rd Party Platform Integrations
Additionally, performance-focused technology providers leverage the WebPageTest API to build complementary product and solution integrations to automate image, delivery, and vulnerability analysis, designed to improve customer page load speed and security.

"Today, vulnerability management is no longer a nice-to-have but rather a critical requirement for anyone running web applications or interactive and static websites,” says Liran Tal, Director of Developer Advocacy at Snyk. “These kinds of public-facing assets are common attack vectors for malicious actors seeking unauthorized access to systems and data. Snyk uses WebPageTest to perform 3rd party library detection and vulnerability scanning that reveals potential security vulnerabilities in your website pages."

WebPageTest API services are available now and include out-of-the-box integrations and access to Catchpoint’s award-winning support organization, as well as an updated documentation hub and discussion forum. This new API service does not impact the free version of WebPageTest.