Running Your First Scan
Once you’ve added a site, you’re ready to run your first scan.
Trigger a manual scan
Section titled “Trigger a manual scan”- Go to Dashboard → Sites and click on your site.
- Click the Start New Scan button on the site detail page.
- PerfLeaf queues the scan job and the status changes to In Progress.
What happens during a scan
Section titled “What happens during a scan”The crawler visits your site using a headless browser (Playwright) and for each page it collects:
- Core Web Vitals — LCP, CLS, INP, FCP, TTFB
- Asset sizes — JavaScript, CSS, images, HTML
- Accessibility issues — automated scan for WCAG violations
- Security headers — HTTPS, CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, etc.
- DOM metrics — node count, tree depth, tag counts
- CO₂ emissions — estimated carbon cost of loading the page
- Tech stack — detected frameworks and libraries
- Screenshot — visual snapshot of the page
Depending on the size of your site and your plan’s page limit, scans typically complete in a few seconds to a few minutes.
Scan modes
Section titled “Scan modes”PerfLeaf supports two crawl modes. The mode available to you depends on your plan:
| Mode | What it does | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Single page | Crawls only the homepage (or a specified URL) | All plans |
| Full site | Follows all internal links and/or sitemap entries | Grow / Bloom |
See Scan Modes for a full comparison.
Monitoring progress
Section titled “Monitoring progress”While a scan is running you’ll see a live progress bar on the site detail page and on the sites list. You can also cancel a running scan by clicking the Cancel Scan button — the report will be marked as Cancelled.
After the scan
Section titled “After the scan”When the scan completes the report is available immediately. Click View Report to open it, or read Understanding Results for a guided tour.