Why is this website SO SLOW?!

[Isabelle-Gerry0]

Airbnb's website/platform is one of the worst I've experienced. 

It feels like every time I click on something I have to walk away for coffee and by the time I come back, I forget what I was doing! It's SO slow. The calendar is a mess. The pricing is a mess. I have to click through a bunch of things to get to something so basic. And sometimes... I'll update prices and availability... and hit save and..... IT WON'T SAVE.

😐 You'd think a billion (??) dollar business would be able to have a website that works. And the burden of the torture is on the hosts which is probably why they don't care to fix it all these years.

[Jack335]

The real reason for this super slow, lazy and sluggish site is the technology used behind it.

They use Amazon (slow) Web Services, Ruby on Rails, and React Javascript library. This is a very slow combination. Maybe if they move on to Angular and Node.js we'll experience more speed. Good luck with that...

[Mark1340]

I agree completely, I have 300Mbs fibre and I've just had to wait about 20 seconds to see pictures of the home of a host.  My speed check (wirless) shows 180Mbs down.

IT department, sort it out, this is what we're all paying you commision for, c'mon guys!

[Daniel2311]

Wow, feels like some serious backend latency issue (multiple seconds for simple page loads) - something's just not right. I have a 330Gb internet connection and a recent Macbook Pro that performs amazingly on all other websites. What gives?!?

[Sastra0]

Glad I'm not the only one feeling this website is incredibly SLOW... but not just on the  website, it's also slow on the app. Everytime i clicked on anything it feels sluggish.

[Katherine372]

I'm new to Airbnb and I am floored at how bad the website works.  Its akin to AOL type speeds back in the 90s. 

[Marcin5]

Searching for places using a map is a waste of time. Shame! Greate feature but it's way too slow. Can't even imagine what's going on behind the scene on the javascript side... 😜

[Matt600]

When navigating to the airbnb.com home page, just trying to enter dates for the stay is incredibly slow.  I dont think its trying to use back end services during that time, its just poorly written javascript.  Also, when I am logged in and try to use the Dates drop down callendar widget trying to rotate through the months using the left/right arrows is incredibly slow and causes spinner on the mac mouse.  That only happens when poorly written javascript is doing so much that its causing the main thread for the browser tab to hang making it unresponsive.  Even trying to close the tab takes seconds while the browser competes with that bad javascript.

Who is running the show for engineering at AirBnb?  They need to be fired and go work for the government health care website - they'll fit right in.

[Marieke22]

I guess many many people have the same issues, just like me. I'm wondering what they will do about it and when. 

[Chris773]

Unfortunately, probably nothing. 😞

BTW, I'm on a Core-i7-6920HQ running at 2.9GHz with 32GB of RAM and 2.5TB of disk space (nowhere near full) on a gigabit-symmetrical fiber Internet connection with 0.9ms ping to a local datacenter and 19.8ms ping to Airbnb's CDN edge in Dallas, so clearly it isn't on my end. It's either (as mentioned before) poorly-written JS or really bad back-end database service infrastructure. Either way, pages take multiple seconds to load, which is absolutely unacceptable in today's IT world.

But they don't care; it's been this way as long as I've been using Airbnb. 😞

Edit: ha, just ran across this blog article, dated 2013...yeah, they apparently haven't kept up with performance testing: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/performance-tuning-e10ac94916df

Edit #2: I just checked, and it took a full 17 SECONDS for https://www.airbnb.com/hosting/reservations/upcoming to load for me. Someone's head should be rolling.

[Khurram7]

It's great that you have such a powerful machine. As a software (web) dev I can tell you that it means nothing (except for you showing off ;). I do agree though that Airbnb's web app ("website") is indeed *ridiculously* slow. 

That's why I landed on this thread, of course. 

The performance issue is fully on the server side. No it's not client-side JS (they don't have much of it) and that type of performance slowdown "feels" very different.

The Airbnb web app app is built with Rails which I'm a big fan of. While Ruby is a "slow" language, it is still quite popular and used by fast sites. The fact that it's slower than other (compiled) languages such as Go or Crystal really just means that the devs and devops folks just have to do a bit more work to make it feel as fast as services like Facebook, Google, Github (also built with Rails), etc. These things include caching and other optimizations of that kind. And also having faster and just more quantity of web servers, horizontally scaled and load balanced (which I'm sure they have at this scale, but maybe not enough of? Not sure). 

Anyway, I also am in a bit of shock at how slow this app is. I know it's not a simple codebase, but surely there must be so many easy wins. I don't want ot make it sound like performance optimizations are easy. They are actually some of the hardest problems to solve, especially with such a busy/popular app. But they have the money and resources. 

I assume their team is quite aware of the situation and are on it. I just want to +1 that it would be nice for it to feel at least "normal" in terms of performance. Don't need it to be blazing fast imho. 

---

After writing this I just did some quick DevTools based analysis on their CALENDAR page. And at first glass it seems quite unoptimized. Notes in the screenshot: https://d.pr/i/2NvgXV

[Ange2]

Recently it has slowed down even more, sometimes I wait minutes for the login to take, and there are far more 404 error pages than I have seen before.

[Betsy96]

It's super super slow for me consistently.  And it's one of the most accessed websites througout my day.  When I have a question come in from a guest I need to respond quickly but often I need to click to the calendar to double check their dates, then to inbox to review our messages, etc. etc.  I need to click around quickly to respond to inquiries and it really disrupts my day.

[Miguel26]

OMG YES! Even to join this thread! I always use the app even if if takes foverer to type a message. 

[Peter1536]

I have completely given up as I keep losing bookings because I cannot log on or when I can I cannot log off .    I have done every thing possible and do not have any problems with any other website.   Do not have the time or energy to keep trying .

[Inobooking0]

Very very slow and so frustrating. No other website is slow on my Mac, they all resond immediatelly. Airbnb really feels like dial-up all over again... I hope they solve this, because it does bring us reservations.