overleaf.com website review

2 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 9.3 s.

11 images could be 664 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.6 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 56 (desktop: 85). Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

About 101 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

About 316 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page.

Google CDN costs a phone 101 ms of main-thread work and 347 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

2 third-party services load with your homepage (Google CDN and Google reCAPTCHA), adding 349 KiB and 103 ms of main-thread time.

3 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 122 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 50 ms).

Polyfills for old browsers add 21 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

Desktop scores 85 but mobile only 56. A gap that wide usually means heavy scripts and images that hit phones hardest.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on this page (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

The first text or image appears after 10.2 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 11.7 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Collaborative LaTeX editing in Overleaf using document shar…”.

Visually, the page fills in at 10.2 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 14.6 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Real visitors wait 2.6 s for the largest content to appear (75th percentile). Good is under 2.5 s.

Real visitors see the first content after 2.1 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 942 ms for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

21 images have no width and height attributes, so the layout jumps as each one loads.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 321 ms to 320 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 2.8 s to 2.6 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 5.3 MB in 64 requests on a phone: media 1.9 MB (3), fonts 1.5 MB (7) and images 1.2 MB (30). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

6 images (593 KiB) are JPEG, PNG or GIF. The same pictures as WebP or AVIF are usually much smaller at the same quality, and every current browser shows them.

6 images further down the page (593 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

2 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example advanced-reference-search-asset.png at 3,080 px wide, shown at 366 px. Resized copies would save about 128 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.51 g of CO₂e: 180.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

8 images have no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

Headings skip levels (h2 → h4), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (1 element).

Your title is only 29 characters: “Overleaf, Online LaTeX Editor”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

No XML sitemap at https://www.overleaf.com/sitemap.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

Open Graph is missing og:title, so shared links fall back to guesses.

The homepage links to 61 pages on overleaf.com and 29 external pages.

There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

/about/features-overview, /about/ai-features, /for/enterprises, /for/government, /for/publishers and /about/customer-stories and 3 others use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

/legal has no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 25 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

4 of 14 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: net::ERR_FAILED”.

1 link go through two or more redirects, for example https://www.overleaf.com/auth/google?intent=sign_up.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

overleaf.com's DNS answers are not signed. DNSSEC stops attackers forging them to send visitors or email elsewhere; most registrars switch it on in a click, though most sites still run without it.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

The homepage carries about 731 words of visible text.

Email authentication: SPF record 25 points, plus 15 when it ends in -all (10 for ~all); DMARC record 25, plus 25 for a reject policy (15 for quarantine); a DKIM key on a common selector 10.

Opening the homepage sets 1 cookie (measured from a US location before any click).

No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.

Loading the homepage contacts 2 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.