Every 100ms Costs You Money.
Calculate How Much.
Amazon proved it in 2006: 100ms of latency equals 1% of sales. Twenty years later, the math still holds. Use the calculator below to estimate what slow performance costs your business every month.
Based on ~7% conversion improvement per 1s of latency reduction (Akamai/Google research). Full calculator with more options
The Headline Numbers
100ms = 1% of sales
Internal A/B test showed every 100ms of added latency cost 1% of sales revenue.
1s = +2% conversions
For every 1-second improvement in page load, Walmart saw a 2% increase in conversions.
0.5s = -20% traffic
Adding 0.5 seconds to Google search results reduced traffic by 20% (Marissa Mayer).
0.1s = +8.4% conversions
Deloitte/Google joint study found 0.1s mobile speed improvement lifted retail conversions 8.4%.
Latency Cost by Industry
Milliseconds mean money in every industry. The specific cost model differs, but the principle is universal.
Ecommerce
7% conversion loss per second
Page speed directly determines conversion rate. Every second beyond 1s costs roughly 7% of conversions, compounding with bounce rate increases.
Learn moreAPI / Microservices
P99 latency compounds across chains
A 6-service chain with 20ms P50 each has 120ms total P50, but P99 with retries pushes past 300ms. Tail latency is where the real cost hides.
Learn moreFinancial Trading
$4M per millisecond for brokers
In high-frequency trading, a 1ms advantage is worth $100M to a major brokerage firm. At 500ms delay, traders lose 20%+ of available spread.
Learn moreCloud Gaming
100ms playability threshold
Below 100ms, most players cannot distinguish cloud from local. Above 100ms, satisfaction drops sharply and subscriber churn increases.
Learn moreThe Compounding Problem
Latency does not just lose revenue once. It compounds across four dimensions simultaneously. A slow site loses direct conversion revenue, drops in search rankings (reducing organic traffic), discourages return visits, and damages brand perception. One source of slowness, four channels of revenue loss.
7% conversion loss per second of delay. Immediate, measurable revenue impact on every visit.
Failing Core Web Vitals pushes you down in search results. Position 3 gets 4x the clicks of position 8.
53% of mobile users abandon sites that take over 3 seconds. They rarely come back.
Users associate slow performance with low quality. The halo effect works in reverse.
Load Time vs. Revenue Impact
Quick reference table based on aggregated research from Akamai, Google, and Deloitte.
| Load Time | Conversion Impact | Bounce Rate | Revenue Index | User Perception |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| < 1s | Baseline | Baseline | 100 | Instant |
| 1 - 2s | -7% | +10% | 93 | Fast |
| 2 - 3s | -14% | +32% | 86 | Noticeable delay |
| 3 - 5s | -25% | +90% | 75 | Slow |
| 5 - 7s | -35% | +123% | 65 | Very slow |
| 7 - 10s | -50% | +150% | 50 | Abandoned |
| > 10s | -60%+ | +175%+ | < 40 | Broken |
Sources: Google/SOASTA research, Akamai State of Online Retail Performance, Deloitte Mobile Consumer Survey. Revenue index uses sub-1s as the baseline of 100.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does website latency cost in lost revenue?
Research from Akamai and Google shows that a 1-second delay in page load time reduces conversions by approximately 7%. For an ecommerce site earning $1M per month, each extra second of load time costs roughly $70,000 monthly. Amazon estimated that 100ms of added latency would cost 1% of sales. At their current scale, that translates to billions per year.
How much does 1 second of latency cost?
It depends on your revenue. At $100K monthly revenue, 1 second of unnecessary latency costs about $7,000 per month. At $1M monthly revenue, it costs $70,000. At $10M, it costs $700,000. Use the calculator above to model your specific situation. The 7% per second figure comes from aggregated research by Akamai, Google, and Deloitte.
Does latency affect SEO rankings?
Yes. Google has used page speed as a ranking signal since 2010 for desktop and since 2018 for mobile. Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) are explicit ranking factors. The March 2026 update tightened the LCP threshold from 2.5s to 2.0s. Slow pages lose revenue twice: once from lower conversion rates and again from reduced organic search traffic.
What causes website latency?
The main causes include slow server response time (TTFB), large unoptimized images, render-blocking JavaScript and CSS, no CDN or misconfigured CDN, excessive third-party scripts, large DOM size, and serving content from geographically distant servers. Most sites have multiple contributing factors that compound. A CDN alone often delivers 15-30% improvement.
What is P99 latency and why does it matter?
P99 latency is the response time at the 99th percentile, meaning 99% of requests are faster than this value. It matters because averages hide tail latency. A service with 20ms average and 900ms P99 is not fast for 1% of users. At 1 million requests per day, that is 10,000 slow responses. In microservice architectures, P99 latency compounds across the service chain.
How is the latency cost calculated?
The calculator uses a model based on published research showing approximately 7% conversion rate improvement per 1 second of load time reduction. It calculates the expected conversion lift between your current and target load times, then applies that lift to your monthly revenue. This is an indicative model based on industry averages from Akamai, Google, and Deloitte research. Actual impact varies by site type and audience.
Managing Cloud Infrastructure Costs?
Reducing latency often means adding CDN edge nodes, which increases egress cost. Platform engineering teams own latency budgets and SLOs. See our related guides.