Early Hints: How Cloudflare Can Improve Website Load Times by 30%

Cloudflare has announced support for Early Hints, a new feature that significantly improves browser page load performance and reduces idle time. In initial tests using Early Hints, the company observed more than 30% improvement to page load times for first-time visitors to a website. The technology is currently available in beta and can be accessed by Cloudflare customers through the dashboard's Speed tab. Early Hints works by taking advantage of "server think time" to asynchronously send instructions to the browser, allowing it to begin loading resources while the origin server compiles the full response. By sending these hints before the complete response is prepared, the browser can figure out what it needs to do to load the webpage faster for the end user. The technology is based on a new HTTP status code (103 Early Hints) that defines new interactions between a client and server. It enables the browser to use "think time" (when it would otherwise be waiting) to fetch needed assets, prepare parts of the displayed page, and get ready for the full response to be returned. Early Hints is particularly useful for optimizing dynamic page loads by using "server think time" to help get the browser going on critical steps to render the page before the full server response arrives. This can lead to faster page loads and lower user-perceived latency, resulting in happier users.