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Marie King

What is First Input Delay (FID)?

3–4 minutes to read

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First Input Delay (FID) measures how soon your site becomes responsive to user input. Specifically, if a user clicks on a button or a link, how quickly does your site respond with the expected result of that action? 

FID is a good indicator of your reader’s first impression of your site’s interactivity and responsiveness, and a good FID score means a reader is more likely to stick around on your site and return to consume more content. Everyone loves a fast, responsive site!

cartoon image of a man sitting with a laptop in his lap and a 'click here' sign

What causes poor FID?

  • Long tasks where the browser has to pause to run an event
  • Long JavaScript execution time
  • Large JavaScript bundles
  • Render-blocking JavaScript
cartoon graphic of three mobile phones showing loading of a page

Generally speaking, input delay is a result of the browser’s main thread being occupied by other tasks, so it is unable to respond to the user (yet). 

A common reason for this is the browser is still busy executing and parsing big JavaScript files. 

So when the user tries to interact with something, the browser is too busy to notice (run an event listener) and respond because the JavaScript that’s running might direct it to perform a different action. 

How to measure and assess your FID score

Unlike LCP and CLS, FID is a metric that can only be measured “in the field” using real users’ experiences and not “in the lab” using simulated tests — because FID requires someone to interact with the page and provide that First Input. 

What’s the difference between “field” and “lab” data?
I’m glad you asked! We break it all down right here.

If you’re looking for a lab metric, you can use Total Blocking Time (TBT). TBT correlates well to FID, and improvements made for TBT should also reflect in improved performance for FID.

In terms of FID scores, you want to aim for less than 100 milliseconds to be classified as “good” by Google. Slower than 300 milliseconds is categorized as “poor”.

FID benchmarks with a bar going from green to red with time metrics

Tools to measure FID

You can use the following tools to understand your site’s FID score:  

Field tools 

Lab tools to measure Total Blocking Time (TBT)

Getting to “Good”: five steps to improve your FID score

To learn how to improve FID for a specific site, you can run a Lighthouse performance audit and pay attention to any specific opportunities the audit suggests.

If you don’t have a deep love for JavaScript and the way browsers work, this is a great time to get your developer involved! 

  1. Minimize/defer JavaScript
  2. Break up long tasks
  3. Use a web worker
  4. Implement a browser cache
  5. Remove non-critical third-party scripts

Dig deeper on FID:

Your Core Web Vitals roadmap

Knowledge is power! Start here:

Dig deeper to understand each metric and why it’s important for user experience:

Benchmark your site’s Core Web Vitals so you understand your starting position:

Make a step-by-step plan to improve Core Web Vitals:

Tackle low-hanging fruit:

Marie King

About Marie King

As Director of Publisher Insights, Marie gets to support AdThrive publishers by digging into data to find and share interesting findings to help our publishers continue to thrive! With almost a decade working with many types of publishers, Marie is thrilled to be part of the AdThrive team working with and helping the publishers she’s been obsessed with for years. A Chicago native, she now lives in Denver with her husband, dog, three cats, and an extensive collection of board games.