Definition
Interaction to Next Paint is how long a page takes to visibly respond after you click, tap or press a key. It is the responsiveness measure among Google's three Core Web Vitals, which Google describes as measuring real-world user experience, and a good INP is 200 milliseconds or less.
Example. Tap "Add to cart" and the button takes 400 milliseconds to show any change. That one interaction is enough to put the page in the needs improvement band.
You can see your page's INP from real visitors, next to sites ranking in your niche, with the free Is My Page Speed Really a Problem? tool.
What is a good INP score?
A good INP score is 200 milliseconds or less. Over 500 milliseconds is poor, and the band in between needs improvement. Like the other Core Web Vitals, it is judged at the 75th percentile of real page loads.
| INP | Band |
|---|---|
| 200 milliseconds or less | Good |
| Over 200 and up to 500 milliseconds | Needs improvement |
| Over 500 milliseconds | Poor |
How often do ranking sites fail INP?
Ranking sites fail INP far less often than LCP in most niches, and badly in a few. In our benchmark of 38,950 domains ranking across 12 niches and 5 markets (July 2026 field data, phones), between 5% and 30% of the measured sites in a niche and market group failed INP, and it was the most common failure in 2 of the 60 groups.
These are sites ranking in a niche and market, not an industry average, and the data has no ranking variable, so it shows how common a slow INP is, not what it costs.
Which interactions does INP count?
INP counts clicks, taps and key presses, and ignores hovering, scrolling and zooming. The final value is the longest interaction observed on the visit, ignoring one of the highest for every 50 interactions, so a single freak delay on a long visit does not decide the score. Each interaction's time splits into three parts: the input delay before any code runs, the processing time while it runs, and the presentation delay until the next frame appears.
How do you improve INP?
You improve INP by finding the slow interactions in real visitor data first, then fixing the phase where the time goes. web.dev's advice is to start from field data and only then reproduce the problem in the lab, because a lab test rarely clicks the same thing at the same moment a real visitor does.
| Phase | The main fix |
|---|---|
| Input delay | Cut long tasks on the main thread, including heavy script evaluation while the page loads |
| Processing duration | Do as little work as possible in the event callback, and break the rest into separate tasks that yield to the main thread |
| Presentation delay | Keep the DOM small, and render less HTML on the client |
What did INP replace?
INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital on 12 March 2024. FID measured only the delay before the first interaction was handled. INP measures every interaction through to the moment the screen changes, which is much closer to whether a page feels slow to use.
Sources
- web.dev: Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
- web.dev: Optimize Interaction to Next Paint
- web.dev: Interaction to Next Paint becomes a Core Web Vital on March 12
- Google Search Central: Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results
- Hawk Academy: Core Web Vitals benchmark of sites ranking in 12 niches and 5 markets
Last checked against these sources on 26 October 2026.