Web Engineering · 9 min read

How to Optimize Web Fonts for Faster Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

Techniques for font subsetting, preloading key assets, reducing Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and self-hosting font binaries.

Preload Critical Hero Fonts

Add a `` tag in your `` for the single font file required to render above-the-fold headings:
```html

```

Glyph Subsetting

If your website is exclusively in English, you do not need 1,000+ localized Cyrillic, Greek, or Asian glyphs in your binary. Subsetting strips unused characters, shrinking font file size from 300KB down to 18KB.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does web font loading impact Google Core Web Vitals?
Slow font loading triggers CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) when fallback fonts swap into custom fonts with different bounding boxes, and harms LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) if text remains invisible during loading.