The Slow Demise of WebPageTest

For more than a decade, WebPageTest was the gold standard for independent, transparent, deeply technical web performance testing. Originally created by Patrick Meenan in 2008 and later open‑sourced, it became the tool I trusted when I needed comprehensive performance tests, filmstrips, waterfalls, and the kind of granular diagnostics no other platform could match.

But since Catchpoint acquired WebPageTest in 2020 and gradually folded it into its enterprise monitoring platform, I’ve felt the tool I relied on slowly slipping away.

On paper, the acquisition sounded promising: more features, more global test locations, deeper integration with broader monitoring capabilities. And if you read the official announcements, that’s exactly the story: WebPageTest evolving into part of a larger, more powerful enterprise ecosystem.

In practice, though, the experience has changed in ways that make it far less useful for the kind of work I do.

The first thing that hit me was the interface. The classic WebPageTest UI was never flashy, but it was efficient and gave me everything I needed without friction. The new frontend feels like it was built for a completely different audience, or perhaps without a clear audience at all. It’s cramped, unintuitive, and oddly simplified in all the wrong places. Instead of reducing cognitive load, it increases it. What used to be a focused diagnostic tool now feels like a generic enterprise observability widget.

Then there are the metrics and features. Some of the things I depended on are harder to find or removed entirely. Customisation options have disappeared. Even when the underlying data still exists somewhere, the path to reach it is more cumbersome. It’s hard to shake the feeling that the tool is being reshaped to fit Catchpoint’s product strategy rather than the needs of the developers and performance engineers who built their workflows around it.

And that’s really the heart of the problem for me: WebPageTest no longer feels like a standalone, developer‑first performance tool. It feels like a feature inside an enterprise platform. The spirit of openness, clarity, and technical depth that defined it has been overshadowed by commercialisation and integration. I understand how this happens - it’s a familiar story for beloved tools after acquisition - but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing.

I’ve been a paying customer of WebPageTest, but I’m now questioning whether I want to continue supporting the tool in its current state. I don’t think WebPageTest is dead, but the version I depended on is fading. What it needs now is a realignment with its original purpose: helping people diagnose performance issues quickly, clearly, and deeply.

If WebPageTest is going to remain relevant for people like me, it needs to reclaim what made it great: a clean, fast, developer‑centric interface; easy access to both classic and modern metrics; the ability to customise how data is viewed; and a commitment to preserving the tool’s core identity rather than burying it deeper inside an enterprise ecosystem.

Until then, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re watching the slow demise of one of the best performance tools the web ever had.