Why is my Lovable website slow?

Slowness is usually caused by large unoptimised images, too much data fetched at once, or heavy client-side rendering — profile it with Lighthouse/DevTools before asking Lovable to fix anything.

How do I speed up a Lovable website?

Compress and lazy-load images, fetch only the data each page needs, remove unused dependencies, and ask Lovable to run a performance/codebase audit to find the highest-impact fixes.

Why does my Lovable app get slower as I add features?

Each new feature can add its own data fetches, dependencies, and re-renders that compound over time — without periodic clean-up, an app accumulates weight even if each individual change seems small.

How do I improve Lighthouse scores?

Run Lighthouse to find your worst-scoring category, fix the top 2-3 flagged issues (usually images, unused JavaScript, or render-blocking resources), and re-run it to confirm before moving on.

How do I improve Core Web Vitals?

Focus on the three metrics Google measures — LCP (loading), INP (interactivity), and CLS (visual stability) — and fix the specific one flagged as poor, usually starting with images for LCP.

Why are images loading slowly?

Images usually load slowly because they're uploaded at full camera/design resolution, in an uncompressed format, and without lazy-loading or a CDN — the fix is compression, correct sizing, and modern formats.

Why is my database making so many requests?

Usually a component is re-fetching data on every render, a page is running the same query multiple times, or you're fetching entire tables instead of what's actually needed — ask Lovable to audit data-fetching patterns.

How do I reduce unnecessary database calls?

Fetch only what a page needs, cache results, batch requests, and let Postgres do filtering instead of pulling whole tables into the client.

Why is my dashboard slow?

Dashboards are usually slow because they run several unoptimised queries at once, re-render on every state change, or load large charts and images without lazy loading.

Why does my app become slow with more users?

Slowdowns under load usually mean missing database indexes, no rate limiting, or queries that scale linearly with row count instead of being paginated.

How do I find unnecessary React renders?

Use React DevTools' Profiler and the 'Highlight updates' setting to see which components re-render too often, then fix unstable props, missing memoisation, or state stored too high in the tree.

How do I remove unused code?

Ask Lovable to search for unused components, imports and dependencies, or run a tool like ts-prune/depcheck via the terminal, then remove what's confirmed unused and re-test.

How do I audit a Lovable project's performance?

Combine a browser Network/Performance trace, a React DevTools profile, and a query review of your Supabase schema — then ask Lovable to fix the specific issues found rather than 'optimise everything'.

How do I improve LCP?

Q: How do I optimise images?

Resize images to their actual display size, compress them, convert to WebP/AVIF where practical, and lazy-load anything below the fold — ask Lovable to apply this across the project, not just one page.

Q: How do I lazy-load images?

Ask Lovable to add native lazy-loading to images below the fold while keeping the hero/first-visible image loading eagerly, so visitors aren't downloading offscreen images before they're needed.

Last checked 31 Aug 2026

Short answer

Largest Contentful Paint is almost always slowed by an oversized hero image or a render-blocking resource — compress/preload the largest above-the-fold element and defer everything not needed for first paint.

What LCP measures

Largest Contentful Paint is the time until the biggest visible element (usually a hero image, banner, or heading block) finishes rendering. Google considers under 2.5 seconds good.

Find what your LCP element actually is

Chrome DevTools → Lighthouse or the Performance panel will name the specific element flagged as the LCP candidate — don't guess, check it.

Common fixes

Compress and correctly size the LCP image. A 4000px-wide photo displayed at 800px wastes load time for nothing.
Use modern formats (WebP/AVIF) instead of PNG/JPEG where supported.
Preload the LCP image rather than lazy-loading it — lazy-loading the very element Lighthouse is timing works against you.
Remove render-blocking CSS/JS that delays the whole page from starting to paint.
Avoid client-side data fetching for above-the-fold content where possible — content that waits on an API call before it can render will always hurt LCP.

Prompting Lovable

Lighthouse flags LCP as poor, and names [element] as the LCP candidate. Compress and correctly size that image, make sure it isn't lazy-loaded, and remove any render-blocking resources before it.

What usually goes wrong

Lazy-loading the hero image along with every other image on the page — the LCP element specifically should load eagerly, not lazily.
Fixing image size but leaving the image at full original resolution with only CSS scaling it down — the browser still downloads the full file.
Ignoring font-loading delays, which can hold up text-based LCP elements just as much as images do.

See /questions/how-do-i-optimise-images and /questions/how-do-i-lazy-load-images for the image-specific detail.

Sources

Understanding Core Web Vitals

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GuideHow to Improve Lovable Loading SpeedFind the actual cause of a slow project — images, queries, waterfalls or scripts — before changing anything.