# Difference Page rendering time and Page generation time

**URL:** <https://community.piwik.pro/t/difference-page-rendering-time-and-page-generation-time/1114>\
**Category:** Data collection and tags\
**Created:** [October 12, 2022, 2:56pm UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/difference-page-rendering-time-and-page-generation-time/1114 "2022-10-12T14:56:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![optipiwik](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.piwik.pro/optipiwik/32/806_2.png) [@optipiwik](https://community.piwik.pro/u/optipiwik)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2022, 10:48am UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/difference-page-rendering-time-and-page-generation-time/1114/5 "2022-10-15T10:48:35Z")

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I have read the info on

> **[Load Time vs Render time. Find out how these metrics affect your website. -...](https://simon-frey.com/blog/load-time-vs-render-time-find-out-how-these-metrics-affect-your-website/)**
>
> Load Time and Render Time, you probably have seen these two terms before, but you are not sure what they mean. You know they help give a view of a website's speed and performance, but what is the difference between the Load Time of a website and the...

thanks for the link!

Now I think my confusion has to do with the way PiwikPro reports handle these pagespeed values:

- In the report Pages i can select Pagespeed and then I see the Average page generation time value.

- But in the report Website performance/Page timings the metric Average page generation time is not even there! Instead I see the Average page rendering time.

This is very confusing! I think it would be better to use Average page generation time in both the Pages/Pagespeed report and Performance reports.

That being said, if I understand the difference correct now then:

- Page generation time is the same has what is called Load Time in the linked article.
- page rendering time is the same as what is called Rendering Time in the linked article.

So Page generation time is the time after which the user can see everything on the page, but not everything is loaded at the back-end?

Page rendering time is the time after which the user can see everything on the page, and everything is also completely loaded on the back-end and the page is interactive?

If this is correct then why not change the name Page generation time into Page load time? That would be a lot clearer in the PiwikPro reports, because Page rendering time and Page generation time sound a lot alike and is confusing (at least for me).

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_[View the full topic](https://community.piwik.pro/t/difference-page-rendering-time-and-page-generation-time/1114)._