HTTP vs HTTPS performance

Question

Are there any major differences in performance between http and https? I seem to recall reading that HTTPS can be a fifth as fast as HTTP. Is this valid with the current g

Answer 1

HTTP VS HTTPS PERFORMANCE COMPARISON

I have always associated HTTPS with slower page load times when compared to plain old HTTP. As a web developer, web page performance is important to me and anything that will slow down the performance of my web pages is a no-no.

In order to understand the performance implications involved, the diagram below gives you a basic idea of what happens under the hood when you make a request for a resource using HTTPS.

As you can see from the diagram above, there are a few extra steps that need to take place when using HTTPS compared to using plain HTTP. When you make a request using HTTPS, a handshake needs to occur in order to verify the authenticity of the request. This handshake is an extra step when compared to an HTTP request and does unfortunately incur some overhead.

In order to understand the performance implications and see for myself whether or not the performance impact would be significant, I used this site as a testing platform. I headed over to webpagetest.org and used the visual comparison tool to compare this site loading using HTTPS vs HTTP.

As you can see from Here is Test video Result using HTTPS did have an impact on my page load times, however the difference is negligible and I only noticed a 300 millisecond difference. It's important to note that these times depend on many factors, such as computer performance, connection speed, server load, and distance from server.

Your site may be different, and it is important to test your site thoroughly and check the performance impact involved in switching to HTTPS.