• Tennessee's mobile site takes 24 seconds to load, the worst in the country by a wide margin.
• Iowa is the only state to score perfectly across every quality category on both desktop and mobile.
• Oklahoma loads in 1.28 seconds on both platforms but ranks 41st overall.

State government websites are among the most visited public-sector sites in the country. They handle everything from business licensing to public health information, and for many residents they are the primary interface with state government.

Despite that, web performance across state sites varies enormously. Some states have invested in modern infrastructure that loads quickly and scores well across every technical benchmark. Others have not.

We tested all 50 state government homepages plus Washington D.C. using Google PageSpeed Insights, measuring speed and overall quality across desktop and mobile. The results show a wide gap between the best and worst performers, with no clear regional or population pattern explaining who gets it right.

The Fastest State Government Websites

Oklahoma is the only site that loads in exactly the same time on desktop and mobile: 1.28 seconds each. Michigan has the fastest raw desktop score at 1.23 seconds with a solid 2.68 seconds on mobile. Georgia is close behind at 1.38s desktop and 2.44s mobile, the second-fastest mobile score in the country.

Iowa and Kentucky stand out for combining speed with strong overall scores. Iowa loads in 1.27s on desktop and 3.3s on mobile and carries a total average score of 96.96. Kentucky's desktop performance score of 99 is the highest in the country.

California has the single fastest desktop score in the dataset at 1.05 seconds but a more middling mobile score of 5.46s, placing it outside the combined top 10.

Rank	State	Desktop Speed	Mobile Speed	Combined Avg
1	Oklahoma	1.28s	1.28s	1.28s
2	Georgia	1.38s	2.44s	1.91s
3	Michigan	1.23s	2.68s	1.96s
4	South Dakota	1.31s	2.90s	2.10s
5	Kentucky	1.33s	3.06s	2.20s
6	Iowa	1.27s	3.30s	2.29s
7	New York	1.40s	3.70s	2.55s
8	Maine	1.71s	4.23s	2.97s
9	Arizona	1.70s	4.50s	3.10s
10	New Hampshire	1.70s	4.60s	3.15s

The Slowest State Government Websites

Tennessee is the worst performer by a wide margin. Its desktop Speed Index of 8.53 seconds is the highest in the country, and its mobile score of 24.27 seconds is nearly double the next-worst state. Virginia and South Carolina both exceed 6 seconds on desktop and 16 seconds on mobile. Kansas, Indiana, and New Jersey round out a bottom tier where mobile load times run between 14 and 17 seconds.

Rank	State	Desktop Speed	Mobile Speed	Combined Avg
1	Tennessee	8.53s	24.27s	16.40s
2	Virginia	6.78s	16.74s	11.76s
3	South Carolina	6.09s	16.96s	11.53s
4	Kansas	5.87s	16.68s	11.28s
5	Indiana	5.61s	16.25s	10.93s
6	New Jersey	5.53s	14.07s	9.80s
7	Delaware	4.93s	14.01s	9.47s
8	Montana	4.87s	13.84s	9.36s
9	Hawaii	4.47s	13.05s	8.76s
10	North Dakota	2.75s	13.06s	7.91s

Overall Performance: All States Ranked

Total score is the average across all eight metrics: desktop and mobile performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. Iowa leads by a significant margin, scoring perfectly across accessibility, best practices, and SEO on both platforms. South Carolina ranks last, with the lowest accessibility scores in the dataset. Colorado scores 35 on best practices on both platforms, the lowest in that category, while still hitting 100 on SEO. Tennessee, the slowest site in the country on speed, manages a perfect 100 on desktop accessibility, which illustrates how unevenly these scores can be distributed across categories.

Rank	State	Total	Desk Perf	Mob Perf	Desk Access	Mob Access	Desk BP	Mob BP	Desk SEO	Mob SEO
1	Iowa	96.96	94	98	100	100	100	100	100	100
2	Rhode Island	91.38	79	75	98	98	100	100	92	92
3	Arizona	90.75	95	74	100	100	100	100	100	100
4	Maine	89.67	97	92	100	100	73	73	100	100
5	Pennsylvania	89.63	72	68	100	100	100	100	100	100
6	Arkansas	89.04	63	59	100	100	96	96	100	100
7	Michigan	88.67	95	74	100	96	100	100	100	100
8	Massachusetts	88	83	59	99	92	100	100	92	92
9	Vermont	87.17	62	56	95	96	100	100	100	100
10	Maryland	87.04	69	56	85	82	92	92	100	100
11	Connecticut	86.92	80	61	96	96	96	96	85	85
12	Louisiana	86.88	85	50	98	98	96	96	100	100
13	New York	86.71	84	68	77	73	100	96	92	92
14	Georgia	86.67	97	89	79	80	100	96	92	100
15	California	86.17	86	68	82	82	96	96	73	73
16	Kentucky	85.79	99	98	73	73	92	92	80	80
17	Oregon	85.63	62	60	91	91	96	92	100	100
18	Hawaii	85.46	40	35	97	97	100	100	100	100
19	Nebraska	84.17	84	82	72	78	77	92	77	85
20	Missouri	82.96	72	48	100	100	100	96	92	92
21	Florida	82.25	49	60	94	93	77	77	85	85
22	Utah	81.67	85	42	100	100	96	92	92	92
23	Minnesota	81.46	66	43	97	89	100	96	92	92
24	Illinois	81.38	70	57	90	86	96	92	92	92
25	West Virginia	81.17	69	63	97	97	92	96	85	85
26	New Jersey	81.13	67	43	96	90	96	96	92	92
27	Virginia	81	28	37	92	95	96	96	85	85
28	New Hampshire	80.79	81	56	100	100	54	54	100	100
29	South Dakota	80.79	85	42	98	95	100	100	100	100
30	Alaska	80.5	68	48	97	97	77	77	92	92
31	North Carolina	80.33	78	45	83	82	92	88	92	92
32	New Mexico	80.17	63	31	96	93	100	100	100	100
33	Wisconsin	79.63	83	52	93	93	81	77	100	100
34	Washington	79.04	56	31	100	92	96	96	100	92
35	Ohio	78.5	94	47	95	98	92	96	85	85
36	Idaho	78	68	47	78	81	100	100	77	77
37	Delaware	77.88	63	35	97	100	96	92	73	73
38	Mississippi	77.08	83	57	96	96	62	62	100	100
39	Nevada	76.88	75	57	92	91	92	92	77	77
40	Montana	76.04	55	55	99	94	73	73	77	77
41	Oklahoma	75.63	53	45	100	100	73	73	85	85
42	North Dakota	75.46	65	44	83	82	73	73	85	85
43	Alabama	74.83	42	35	96	96	54	54	100	100
44	Kansas	74.58	28	41	93	93	73	77	83	83
45	Wyoming	74.08	50	54	85	75	77	73	83	83
46	Texas	74	62	53	84	88	50	46	69	77
47	Colorado	73.29	46	40	96	91	35	35	100	100
48	Indiana	73.13	56	43	95	91	77	77	92	92
49	Tennessee	73.08	51	43	100	87	73	73	82	82
50	District of Columbia	71.88	93	49	87	91	77	77	82	82
51	South Carolina	71.79	67	53	73	79	73	73	83	83

Methodology

All scores were collected using Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev), which runs each URL through Google's Lighthouse auditing engine and returns scores across four categories: performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. Each category is scored from 0 to 100.

Performance measures how quickly a page loads and becomes usable, including metrics like First Contentful Paint, Largest Contentful Paint, and Speed Index. Speed Index specifically measures how quickly visible content populates on screen, scored in seconds. Lower is better. Accessibility tests whether a site can be used by people with disabilities, covering things like screen reader compatibility, color contrast, and keyboard navigation. Best practices checks for general web hygiene: HTTPS usage, correct image sizing, absence of known security vulnerabilities, and similar technical standards. SEO evaluates whether the page is structured in a way that search engines can correctly read and index.

Each site was tested separately on desktop and mobile, which use different simulated hardware and network conditions. Mobile tests simulate a slower device and network connection, which is why mobile scores are consistently lower than desktop scores across all states. The total average score is the mean of all eight individual scores for each state.

The homepage of each state's official government portal was tested. Results reflect a single point-in-time measurement and can vary depending on server load, content delivery network performance, and changes to the site after the date of testing.