Is AMP faster than HTML?

AMP the new age framework for quicker and lighter webpages has seen a popular rise over the past year. But is its main aim of being quick actually true? How does it compare to regular HTML?

Thanks to GianlucaGuarini there is a benchmarks on the two. This post comes from this GitHub repo and this Medium article.

The test where run utilizing the Chrome dev console with Lighthouse audit tool. The findings came down to AMP pages loading quicker and having a faster first paint time however the time to interactivity was a lot more with AMP pages than HTML close to double in fact.

AMP brings faster page load and paints but the interactivity is slower. Meaning if you load an AMP page you have to wait for that interactivity time before you can scroll down and get into the content.

Giving AMP the benefit of the doubt in it being a newish concept, easy to use and the scope for improvement maybe it will get better. I also note the test was done loading AMP externally which would give different results compared to having the AMP .js file locally.

Here are the images from the tests:

AMP Light:

HTML Light:

AMP Heavy:

HTML Heavy: