I measured the 50 most visited websites in Algeria. Only 3 load in under 3 seconds

On Saturday 17 October 2026, from El Oued, on an Algérie Télécom line, I measured the 50 most visited .dz websites in Algeria: ministries, universities, Algérie Poste, AADL, CNAS, the mobile operators, and a few companies and stores. The question was simple: on a phone on a weak network, how many of them show their content in under 3 seconds?

The answer: 3 out of 50. The median is 15.8 seconds, and 34 sites take more than 10 seconds before their main content appears.

This is not about calling these sites bad, or blaming anyone. Most of what I found is the same in plenty of company sites and online stores, and most of it can be fixed in days, not months. These numbers are a snapshot of one day, and they may change tomorrow.

How I measured#

The list comes from Tranco, an academic ranking of the top million domains in the world, updated every day.¹1 List 64VVX from Tranco, downloaded on 17 October 2026. Tranco combines several rankings so that it is hard to manipulate. I took the first 50 .dz domains that have a website of their own: I left out google.dz, domains with no website at all, and domains that send you to another domain (like sonatrach.dz, which goes to sonatrach.com). That is why there are so many universities on the list: 16 out of 50.

The measuring tool is Lighthouse, Google's tool that also ships inside Chrome. Every site was measured three times in mobile mode, and I kept the median so that one unlucky run cannot decide the ranking. Lighthouse models a mid range phone on a weak network: 1.6 Mbps, 150ms for every round trip, and a processor four times slower than a laptop.²2 Lighthouse 13.5's default mobile settings, described in Lighthouse's documentation. This is not Algeria's internet: it is the same test Google uses for every site in the world, and it is what you live through when the signal drops: on the road, in a remote area, or somewhere crowded. On top of that, I loaded every site once on my real line in El Oued.

The number to follow is called LCP: the time until the largest element on the page appears, the moment the page feels loaded. Google counts 2.5 seconds or less as good.³3 According to web.dev, an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less is good. I took 3 seconds, and even with that generous line, this is the result.

Sort them however you like, and pick one to see what slows it down:

dz.speed.boardInteractive demoReset

Sort by

Load timeWeightScore

ShowAll 50

3 of 50 load in under 3 s. The median: 15.8 s.

1. 1FAF Connect2.3 s
2. 2Decathlon Algérie2.4 s
3. 3Air Algérie3.0 s
4. 4BUAA3.4 s
5. 5Ministry of Defence4.2 s
6. 6UFC5.8 s
7. 7Université Constantine 16.0 s
8. 8Université de Saïda6.3 s
9. 9CERIST6.7 s
10. 10École Polytechnique (ENP)7.6 s
11. 11L'Algérie Aujourd'hui7.7 s
12. 12USTHB8.0 s
13. 13Ministry of Interior8.0 s
14. 14Naftal8.1 s
15. 15Ecotrack8.7 s
16. 16Université de Mostaganem8.9 s
17. 17Competition.dz11.0 s
18. 18Ooredoo11.7 s
19. 19NIC.dz (.dz registry)12.0 s
20. 20Mobilis13.5 s
21. 21Université Sétif 213.6 s
22. 22Kiabi Algérie15.0 s
23. 23Ministry of Education15.5 s
24. 24Yalidine15.7 s
25. 25AADL (registration)15.8 s
26. 26CACI15.9 s
27. 27Customs (Douanes)16.0 s
28. 28Université Sétif 116.4 s
29. 29Université de Souk Ahras16.4 s
30. 30ANEM16.9 s
31. 31Algérie Poste18.2 s
32. 32Ministry of Higher Education18.2 s
33. 33APS (news agency)18.7 s
34. 34Université de Guelma19.3 s
35. 35Fiat Algérie20.1 s
36. 36Université de Boumerdès20.6 s
37. 37CNAS22.9 s
38. 38Université de Ouargla23.3 s
39. 39Radio Algérienne23.6 s
40. 40Djezzy27.4 s
41. 41Université de Béjaïa28.3 s
42. 42ANAE (auto-entrepreneur)29.6 s
43. 43Université de Biskra33.9 s
44. 44Takwin37.2 s
45. 45KD Concept38.3 s
46. 46Algérie Télécom47.3 s
47. 47Ministry of Justice51.8 s
48. 48Ministry of Finance53.2 s
49. 49Université de Tizi Ouzou62.3 s
50. 50Université de M'Sila69.3 s

All sites

FAF Connect

fafconnect.dz

Weak network

2.3 s

Our line, El Oued

0.2 s

Weight

1.6 MB

Score

98/100

• Images1.1 MB
• JavaScript0.4 MB
• Fonts35 KB
• CSS40 KB
• HTML31 KB
• Other3 KB

• Server in Algeria
• No CDN
• Text compressed
• http goes to https

Biggest fixes

1. Remove redirectsabout 0.8 s
2. Resize and compress imagesabout 0.6 s
3. Stop blocking the first paintabout 0.1 s

On my line they load in two seconds. So why?#

On the El Oued line, the median is 2.2 seconds, and 41 of 50 sites load in under 3 seconds. So the sites are not down, and the servers answer well.

The problem is weight. The median site weighs 4.0 MB, and 19 sites weigh more than 5 MB. Internet in Algeria is fast today, and on a good line you do not notice. But when the signal drops, every megabyte is paid in time, and a site has to work in that moment too. Every megabyte also comes out of their data balance.

A site that loads in two seconds on the developer's desk can take far longer in the hand of someone with a mid range phone and a weak signal.

Images: 65% of the weight#

On the median site, images are 65% of the weight. 28 sites send more than 2 MB of images on the home page alone. Algérie Poste weighs 18.4 MB, 17.1 MB of it images, and the University of M'Sila weighs 32.5 MB, 20 MB of it images.

They are usually photos from a phone or a camera, put as they are into the home page's slider: an image thousands of pixels wide, shown a few hundred pixels wide on a phone screen.

The fix:

• Resize each image to the size it is shown at, and give the browser a few sizes with srcset so the phone takes the small one.
• Use WebP or AVIF instead of JPEG and PNG: the same picture, far lighter.
• loading="lazy" on every image below the first screen, so it only loads when the visitor gets there.
• A slider with 6 large images on the home page? One is enough on the first screen.

None of this is hard: Squoosh does it in the browser, and WordPress has plugins that do it automatically. If you're a developer, the best library for this is sharp for Node.js: it resizes images and converts them to WebP and AVIF at build time or on the server, much faster than the alternatives.

CSS and JavaScript block the first paint#

The cause Lighthouse raises most is render blocking: CSS and JavaScript files in the head, and the browser draws no pixel until they have all loaded. It is in the three biggest fixes for 40 of 50 sites, and the median time a site would win by fixing it is 2.7 seconds on its own.

Then there is the JavaScript itself: 16 sites send more than 1 MB of JavaScript, and much of it does nothing on the home page. It is usually WordPress plugins loading on every page, a slider, a popup, a chat, or a whole library to run one button.

The fix:

• defer every script that is not needed before the first paint.
• Put the CSS the first screen needs inside the HTML itself, and load the rest after.
• Remove the plugins nobody uses, and check that each plugin only loads on the page that needs it.

Fonts and the small things#

Some mistakes are small but cost a lot:

• Fonts: the Ministry of Higher Education sends 1.6 MB of fonts, and Sétif 1 University sends 1.4 MB. Use woff2 files holding only the Arabic and Latin letters you use, and font-display: swap so the text shows before the font arrives.
• Compression: 7 sites send their HTML without gzip or brotli: Naftal, Mobilis, Yalidine, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Justice, the University of Boumerdès, and Sétif 2 University. One line in the server's settings.
• https: 4 sites stay on http when you type http, instead of sending you to https: CNAS, the Algerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Air Algérie, and the University of Biskra.
• Caching: most sites do not tell the browser to keep their files, so every visit downloads everything again.

To see what each fix wins, pick a site and switch them on one by one:

fixes.what.ifInteractive demoReset

SiteAADL (registration)

• Resize and compress images12.4 s fastermeasuredEach image is sent at the size it is shown, compressed, in WebP or AVIF.
• Lazy load images1.6 s fasterestimateImages below the first screen wait until the visitor scrolls to them.
• Defer the JavaScript0.1 s fastermeasuredScripts load after the page shows, and unused code is dropped.
• Critical CSS first2.3 s fastermeasuredThe CSS for the first screen comes inside the HTML, the rest loads after.
• Lighter fonts9 KB lighterestimateFonts hold only the letters used, and text shows while they load.
• gzip or brotlinothing to win heremeasuredThe server sends its text compressed.
• Cache for the next visitnext visit onlymeasuredThe browser keeps the files, so the next visit downloads less.

Weak network, load time

Before15.8 s

After, estimate3.4 s

Weight

Before2.9 MB

After, estimate0.4 MB

Measured savings come from Lighthouse on this site. The rest, and every figure after a fix, is an estimate from a simple model.

Hosting is not the problem#

When people talk about slow Algerian websites, the first thing they say is: "the server is in Algeria, that is why". The numbers say otherwise: 43 of 50 sites are served from Algeria, and the servers answer fast. On my line, the median server response time is 94 milliseconds, and 40 of 50 answer in under 600 milliseconds.

The slow sites are slow because of what they send, not where they send it from. Only 4 sites sit behind a CDN (three on Cloudflare and one on Sucuri), and a public site does not need one: a light page from a server in Algeria loads in under 3 seconds without trouble. And as I wrote in the AADL 3 night post, personal data stays on servers in Algeria in any case.

In short#

If you have a site and want it to load in under 3 seconds even when the network is weak:

1. Measure in mobile mode in Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights, not on your laptop.
2. Resize images to the size they are shown at, WebP or AVIF, and lazy loading for everything below.
3. defer the JavaScript, and remove the plugins nobody uses.
4. woff2 fonts holding only the letters you use.
5. gzip or brotli, http sent to https, and caching for your files.
6. Set a target: a home page under 1 MB.

The lightest site on the list is Air Algérie: 0.67 MB, and it is one of the three that load in under 3 seconds. That is not a coincidence.

If you have something to add, you spot a mistake in the numbers, or you want me to measure your site again, send it to me in a private message. Thanks.

At Selance we build websites and platforms for businesses in Algeria and the Gulf, light from day one. If your site is slow on phones and you want someone to find where the problem comes from, let's talk.

Notes

1. List 64VVX from Tranco, downloaded on 17 October 2026. Tranco combines several rankings so that it is hard to manipulate. ↩︎

2. Lighthouse 13.5's default mobile settings, described in Lighthouse's documentation. ↩︎

3. According to web.dev, an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less is good. ↩︎