What is P95 Response Time?

P95 (95th percentile) response time is a metric that helps you understand your store's typical worst-case performance.

Simple explanation

If you have 100 response time measurements, the P95 is the value that 95 of those 100 measurements fall below. In other words, 95% of your checks had a response time better than the P95 value.

Why P95 matters more than average

Average response time can be misleading because a few very fast or very slow responses can skew it. P95 gives you a more realistic picture of what your slower responses look like.

Example:

Average response time: 250ms
P95 response time: 450ms

This tells you that while your store typically responds in about 250ms, 5% of the time it takes up to 450ms. If the P95 is much higher than the average, it means your store occasionally has slow responses.

Where to find P95

P95 response time appears in:

The Response Time Trends chart (orange dashed line) on the Uptime Monitoring page for timeframes of 3+ days
Daily summary tooltips when hovering over trend data

What's a good P95?

Under 500ms — Excellent performance
500ms - 1000ms — Acceptable for most stores
Over 1000ms — Worth investigating; your store may feel slow to some customers