# Page Generation Time still valid? **URL:** \ **Category:** Reports and working with data\ **Created:** [September 16, 2025, 7:44pm UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356 "2025-09-16T19:44:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![loldenburg](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.piwik.pro/loldenburg/32/965_2.png) [@loldenburg](https://community.piwik.pro/u/loldenburg)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2025, 7:44pm UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356/1 "2025-09-16T19:44:44Z")
In Piwik Pro’s default System Dashboard about Website performance, there is the “Page Generation Time” metric (and it shows the dreaded average, which leads to nothing but confusion at clients because single peaks because of single weird browser behaviour lead to extreme(ly irrelevant) peaks in the data. But that’s not my main problem.) This metric however is not used in the Page Timings Report, which is already a bit puzzling… According to [List of dimensions and metrics | Piwik PRO help center](https://help.piwik.pro/support/reports/metrics-dimensions/) , “Page generation time” is “The page loading time on the visitor’s device.” – a very obscure definition that says everything and nothing. I have no clue how this metric behaves compared to the other performance metrics. And yes, I have also read this thread, but I am not any clearer in my old brain what exactly “Page Generation Time” means: > [@Difference Page rendering time and Page generation time](https://community.piwik.pro/t/difference-page-rendering-time-and-page-generation-time/1114/5): > > I have read the info on 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 b… In that thread, @Admin says sth that _ **could** _ be interpreted like “Page Generation Time is deprecated, we need to clean it up”. But that was 2022, and Page Generation Time is still there and in all clients’ system dashboards. Is this metric reliable? In our case, it shows trends that none of the other Page Performance metrics really seem to back up, but that interpretation could also be challenged. I just want to make sure we are not wasting hours and hours trying to figure out what may be the cause for an increased Page Generation Time when the metric is deprecated anyway. ---
**Author:** ![loldenburg](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.piwik.pro/loldenburg/32/965_2.png) [@loldenburg](https://community.piwik.pro/u/loldenburg)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 6:33pm UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356/2 "2025-09-22T18:33:52Z")
Does nobody, not even Piwik Pro themselves know anything about this? ---
**Author:** ![LoneWolves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/df705f/32.png) [@LoneWolves](https://community.piwik.pro/u/LoneWolves)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2025, 8:19am UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356/3 "2025-09-23T08:19:56Z")
> [@Difference Page rendering time and Page generation time](https://community.piwik.pro/t/difference-page-rendering-time-and-page-generation-time/1114/5): > > 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 b… @loldenburg I have been breaking my head over this as well. In the end solved it by using “Median time to interact” in client reporting. ---
**Author:** ![loldenburg](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.piwik.pro/loldenburg/32/965_2.png) [@loldenburg](https://community.piwik.pro/u/loldenburg)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2025, 8:16pm UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356/4 "2025-09-23T20:16:18Z")
Thanks, I do so too, but it can’t be that nobody from Piwik Pro can explain what this cryptic metric is measuring… ---
**Author:** ![Jarek](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.piwik.pro/jarek/32/4408_2.png) [@Jarek](https://community.piwik.pro/u/Jarek)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2025, 3:04pm UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356/5 "2025-10-01T15:04:21Z")
Hi, Page Generation Time is a legacy metric calculated in Piwik PRO’s JS Tracker, which reminds good old times of Piwik open source. Since the introduction of website performance metrics a few years ago, I recommend using them instead. These metrics utilize the [Navigation Timing API](https://www.w3.org/TR/navigation-timing/) provided by the browser, making them more accurate. As a replacement for `Page generation time`, I suggest focusing on `Time to interact`, as it directly reflects the time an end user experiences from a “click” to a fully loaded and interactive web page. Other metrics can help debug which process in the chain took the most time (e.g. loading DOM tree, rendering page, DNS lookup etc.) ---
**Author:** ![loldenburg](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.piwik.pro/loldenburg/32/965_2.png) [@loldenburg](https://community.piwik.pro/u/loldenburg)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2025, 6:56am UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356/6 "2025-10-02T06:56:45Z")
Thanks a lot. So if Page generation time is a legacy metric, then remove from it the default Website performance dashboards that are shipped with every new Piwik Pro account, it just confuses people. It is also interesting that nobody at Piwik Pro seems to know how “Page Generation Time” is actually calculated. I just read it is a “legacy metric”, but hey, it is still in the interface and somewhere there should be some documentation on what this actually means… Otherwise, mark it as “do not use” or “invalid” or sth instead of confusing clients with a metric Piwik Pro doesn’t understand themselves… 😃 just saying… This is not just ranting, it effectively cost the client a lot of time and money. ---
**Author:** ![Jarek](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.piwik.pro/jarek/32/4408_2.png) [@Jarek](https://community.piwik.pro/u/Jarek)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2025, 3:32pm UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356/7 "2025-10-06T15:32:58Z")
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the feedback. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/uploads/piwikpro/original/1X/db7013c4fd6a24443b339309db52f14995207737.png) [@system](https://community.piwik.pro/u/system)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2025, 3:33pm UTC](https://community.piwik.pro/t/page-generation-time-still-valid/5356/8 "2025-10-20T15:33:34Z")
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