Numbers first.
WordPress site on Vultr 4GB VPS, WP Rocket, optimized images: PageSpeed 78 mobile, 91 desktop.
Same content rebuilt in Astro, deployed on Vercel: PageSpeed 100 mobile, 100 desktop.
Why the difference is so large
WordPress executes PHP on every request — even with caching. The cache still needs to warm up, expire, and rebuild. On a slow request or cache miss, the server does real work.
Astro builds to static HTML. The server returns a pre-built file. No PHP. No database query. No cache warmup. Just a file.
What this means in practice
For a content site — blog, reviews, affiliate — the performance gap is real and consistent. Not just in synthetic tests. In real user metrics: LCP, FID, CLS.
The tradeoff: Astro requires a rebuild to publish new content. WordPress publishes instantly. For most content sites, rebuilding on publish (30-60 seconds on Vercel) is acceptable.
For a news site updating 50 times a day? WordPress still wins on workflow.
