When assessing the user experience on your website, you’ll easily find Google tools such as Page Speed Insight (PSI) and Lighthouse. Those are fascinating and effective. But what’s the difference between them?

This article compares them on the usability side: How to use them?

Lighthouse: Included in Google Chrome

Lighthouse is integrated in Google Chrome. More specifically, into the development tools. You can access it by opening the developers tools:

1. Open your website in Google Chrome
2. Right click and select “Inspect”
3. In the bottom portion of your screen (the dev tool), go to Lighthouse
4. Finally, launch the audit: Check the audits categories you want to test and click “Analyze page load”
5. The report will be displayed directly at the bottom of the screen

Here is a recording of the process: https://youtu.be/4d1d5ltTVTI

Page Speed Insight: On the web

Page Speed Insight is a web interface to run Lighthouse. It’s easier to use, but has the same limitations as Lighthouse.

It’s slightly easier to access Page Speed insight:

1. Open https://pagespeed.web.dev/
2. Enter the URL of the page you want to analyze
3. Click analyze

Here is a recording of the whole process: https://youtu.be/HDFqjGOpQ-4

Which one is better for you ?

Well, it depends on your preference. Both are giving the same results. In fact, Page Speed Insights runs Lighthouse under the hood. The only difference is that it runs on the server and not in your browser.

If your internet connection is slow or your computer is struggling, it can be an issue with Lighthouse in Chrome, as it’ll impact your results.

How to run Lighthouse or Page Speed Insight on multiple pages ?

With those two tools, you don’t have any other solution than running it manually. And that’s where Qualitycs comes to help.

Qualitycs runs Lighthouse for your whole website or specific pages. It can also run regularly to be sure that your website always improve.

As Lighthouse runs on servers, your internet connection doesn’t impact anything and the tests are always done in the same conditions. It also means that you don’t need to have your computer on to run the tests.

You can register for Qualitycs here: https://app.qualitycs.dev/register

This comparison is proposed by Qualitycs. An online monitoring tool for your website’s performances. Try it for free on: https://qualitycs.dev