I put Kinsta vs Rocket.net on two identical WordPress test sites and monitored both for five weeks, then hammered them with three separate load testing tools. This page is that data. Every screenshot below is from my own test sites, kinsta.fixwebvitals.com and rocket.fixwebvitals.com, not from either company's marketing.
The short version is that Rocket.net won on almost every speed measurement, and on one of them it was not close: 192 milliseconds average time to first byte against 891 for Kinsta. Kinsta won the server hardware benchmark by a tenth of a point. Both delivered 100% uptime with zero incidents.
The verdict, and the dates behind it
- Time to first byte: Rocket.net 192 ms, Kinsta 891 ms. Grade A against grade E on the same measurement tool.
- Load capacity: Rocket.net handled 273,420 requests to Kinsta's 160,383 in the same k6 test, peaking at 1,144 requests a second against 626.
- Uptime: a tie. Both 100% availability, zero incidents, zero minutes of downtime across the whole window.
- Server benchmark: Kinsta by a nose, 8.3 against 8.2.
- Price: Rocket.net Starter is $30 a month against Kinsta Business at $35, and Rocket.net does not meter your visitors.
- The tests were run 20 March to 28 April 2023. The prices were checked on 23 September 2026. I am not going to pretend three year old benchmarks are this morning's.
How I tested Kinsta and Rocket.net
Two test sites, same WordPress build, same theme, same content, one on each host. I left them running and monitored for five weeks rather than taking a single reading, because a one off speed test tells you about one moment on one network path and very little else.
- Freshping and Uptimia for continuous uptime and response time over the full five weeks.
- GTmetrix compare reports for page level metrics.
- Lighthouse run from multiple global locations, because a host that is quick from one continent can be slow from another.
- LoadFocus, loader.io and k6 for three independent load tests, from gentle to punishing.
- The WordPress Hosting Benchmark plugin for raw server side performance, which strips out the network entirely.
Two things I want to be straight about
The GTmetrix run was not like for like. The Kinsta test page weighed 5.18 MB and the Rocket.net one 3.11 MB. A lighter page posts a better largest contentful paint on any host, so I am not counting that particular result as a clean win, and I will show you the numbers rather than hide the discrepancy.
These benchmarks are from March and April 2023. Both hosts have changed their platforms and their pricing since. The pricing section further down is current as of September 2026 and is labelled separately for exactly that reason. If you want a fresh round of tests, say so and I will run them again.
Kinsta vs Rocket.net TTFB and uptime
Time to first byte is the single most useful number for judging a host, because it is the part of page speed the host actually controls. Here is where the two separated hardest.
| Measurement | Kinsta | Rocket.net | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average TTFB | 891 ms | 192 ms | Rocket.net 4.6x faster |
| Performance grade | E | A | Rocket.net |
| Performance score | 33% | 89% | Rocket.net |
| Freshping average response | 242 ms | 167 ms | Rocket.net 31% faster |
| Uptimia average response | 692 ms | 422 ms | Rocket.net 39% faster |
| Availability | 100% | 100% | Tie |
| Incidents | 0 | 0 | Tie |
| Downtime | 0 minutes | 0 minutes | Tie |
Grade A at 89% against grade E at 33%, on the same tool, on the same day, against the same site build. That is the result that decided this comparison for me. Rocket.net puts Cloudflare Enterprise in front of every plan, which is exactly the kind of architecture that produces a number like 192 milliseconds globally.
The uptime story is the opposite: a dead heat. Neither host dropped a single request in five weeks. If you are choosing between these two on reliability alone, there is nothing in it.
Kinsta's Freshping Apdex came in at 0.98, which is genuinely good, and its worst single response in the whole window was 7,373 milliseconds against a best of 36. Averages hide spikes, and both hosts had them.
GTmetrix and Lighthouse results
GTmetrix put Rocket.net at grade A with a 656 millisecond largest contentful paint and Kinsta at grade B with 767 milliseconds. As flagged above, the Kinsta page was 5.18 MB against 3.11 MB, so read this one as directional rather than decisive.
Lighthouse run from multiple regions is the more interesting test, and it is the one place Kinsta holds its own. Kinsta scored between 58 and 67 depending on region, and Rocket.net between 57 and 72. Rocket.net's ceiling is higher but its floor is slightly lower, which is what a CDN heavy architecture tends to look like.
| Region | Kinsta | Rocket.net |
|---|---|---|
| Best region | 67, Germany | 72, Australia |
| Worst region | 58, US West | 57, Germany |
| Spread | 9 points | 15 points |
Load tests, where the gap became obvious
Three tools, increasing in severity. The first is a gentle test that both hosts should pass comfortably, and both did.
LoadFocus, 10 virtual users from Mumbai: Kinsta averaged 462 milliseconds, Rocket.net 459. Zero errors on both. That is a tie, and it tells you that at low concurrency there is nothing to choose between them.
loader.io, 250 clients a minute: here they separate. Both served all 15,000 requests without failure, but Kinsta averaged 28 milliseconds and Rocket.net averaged 13. Rocket.net was consistently a little over twice as quick under the same sustained load.
k6, the punishing one: this is the result worth remembering. Neither host failed a single request, which says something good about both. But in the same test window Rocket.net served 273,420 requests to Kinsta's 160,383, and peaked at 1,144 requests a second against 626.
| k6 load test | Kinsta | Rocket.net | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total requests served | 160,383 | 273,420 | Rocket.net 1.7x |
| Peak throughput | 626 req/s | 1,144 req/s | Rocket.net 1.83x |
| Failed requests | 0 | 0 | Tie |
Zero failures on either side is the headline nobody writes. Both of these are genuinely good hosts and neither buckled. The difference is headroom: Rocket.net had roughly twice as much of it on the same money.
Server benchmark, the one Kinsta wins
The WordPress Hosting Benchmark plugin runs entirely on the server and ignores the network, so it measures raw compute rather than delivery. On that test Kinsta scored 8.3 and Rocket.net 8.2.
That is a real win for Kinsta and it fits the wider picture. Kinsta runs on Google Cloud's compute optimised machines and its raw server performance is excellent. What the earlier tests show is that Rocket.net's edge delivery more than makes up the difference by the time a byte reaches an actual visitor.
Both failed the same check
Persistent object cache came back failed on both hosts in the benchmark report. On a content site that matters little. On WooCommerce or any site with a lot of uncached queries it matters a great deal, and it is worth asking either host about Redis before you commit.
Kinsta vs Rocket.net pricing in 2026
Prices below were read off both companies' own pricing pages on 23 September 2026, three years after the benchmarks above. Both have restructured since the original test.
| Entry plan | Kinsta Business | Rocket.net Starter |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $35 | $30 |
| Annual | $350 | $300 |
| First month | $0 promo | $1 |
| WordPress installs | 1 | 1 |
| Visitors | Metered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 10 GB | 10 GB |
| Bandwidth | 20 GB | 50 GB |
| CDN | 125 GB CDN bandwidth | Cloudflare Enterprise |
| PHP workers | Not published | Unlimited |
| Backup retention | 14 days | 30 days |
| Uptime guarantee | Not published on Business, up to 99.99% on Enterprise | 99.99% on every plan |
| Renewal increase | Not pledged either way | Never, stated on the page |
Rocket.net is cheaper and gives more on every line that differs. The two that matter most in practice are unmetered visitors and the explicit promise never to raise renewal prices, which is printed on its pricing page. After a week of pricing up hosts where the introductory rate triples at renewal, that pledge is worth reading twice.
| Higher tiers | Kinsta | Rocket.net |
|---|---|---|
| Second tier | Agency, from $340/mo | Pro, $60/mo, 3 installs |
| Third tier | Enterprise, from $500/mo | Business, $100/mo, 10 installs |
| Fourth tier | Custom | Expert, $200/mo, 25 installs |
| Extra site | +$30/mo | Included up to the plan limit |
| Extra storage | +$20/mo per 20 GB | Move up a plan |
The jump is the thing to notice. Kinsta goes from $35 to $340 with nothing in between, because its middle ground is configuring more sites onto the Business plan at $30 each. Rocket.net ladders $30, $60, $100, $200. If you run three to ten sites, Rocket.net's pricing is far simpler to reason about.
One extra worth counting: Rocket.net bundles WP Rocket and WP Umbrella free on every plan. WP Rocket on its own is $44.96 a year, so that alone covers six weeks of the hosting.
Which one should you actually buy?
Most people: Rocket.net
It was faster on almost every test I ran, it costs less, it does not meter your visitors, it keeps backups twice as long, and it promises in writing not to raise your renewal price. If your priority is a fast site for a sensible monthly figure, this is the straightforward answer.
Choose Kinsta if you need what Kinsta is actually for
Kinsta is not losing this comparison because it is bad. It won the raw server benchmark, it held 100% uptime, and its Apdex was 0.98. What you are buying at Kinsta is the platform around the hosting: staging and cloning tooling, 24/7 human support in eight languages, an APM tool built into the dashboard, and an enterprise tier with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 behind it. If you are an agency that needs those things, or a business whose compliance team asks for them, Kinsta earns its price.
If neither fits the budget, the honest third option is that managed hosting at $30 a month is not compulsory. I have written up what shared hosting actually costs over four years, and for a site that is not earning yet, that is the sensible starting point.
Kinsta vs Rocket.net FAQs
Is Rocket.net faster than Kinsta?
In my five week test, yes, on almost every measurement. Rocket.net averaged 192 milliseconds time to first byte against Kinsta's 891, scored grade A against grade E on the same tool, and served 273,420 requests to Kinsta's 160,383 in an identical k6 load test. Kinsta won the raw server benchmark 8.3 to 8.2.
What is the TTFB difference between Kinsta and Rocket.net?
Rocket.net averaged 192 milliseconds and Kinsta 891 milliseconds, so Rocket.net was about 4.6 times faster on that measurement. Two independent monitors agreed on the direction: Freshping showed 167 against 242 milliseconds, and Uptimia showed 422 against 692.
Which has better uptime, Kinsta or Rocket.net?
Neither. Both recorded 100 percent availability, zero incidents and zero minutes of downtime across the full five week monitoring window on two separate tools. On reliability there is nothing to choose between them.
Is Kinsta or Rocket.net cheaper?
Rocket.net. Its Starter plan is $30 a month or $300 a year against Kinsta Business at $35 a month or $350 a year. Rocket.net also leaves visitors unmetered, gives 50 GB of bandwidth against 20, and keeps backups for 30 days against 14.
Does Rocket.net include Cloudflare Enterprise?
Yes, on every plan. Rocket.net states that its platform is delivered and optimised by Cloudflare Enterprise, and that architecture is the most likely explanation for the time to first byte gap measured here.
Does Rocket.net raise prices at renewal?
It says it does not. Rocket.net's pricing page carries an explicit pledge that it will never do price hikes on renewals, which is unusual in this industry and worth weighing against hosts whose introductory rate triples in year two.
How many sites can I host on each?
Kinsta Business covers one WordPress install, with additional sites at $30 a month each. Rocket.net ladders its plans instead: Starter is 1 install at $30, Pro is 3 at $60, Business is 10 at $100 and Expert is 25 at $200.
Did either host fail under load?
No. Neither returned a single failed request in any of the three load tests, including the k6 run that pushed both past 160,000 requests. The difference was headroom rather than stability: Rocket.net peaked at 1,144 requests a second against Kinsta's 626.
Is Kinsta worth the extra money?
It depends what you need. Kinsta won the raw server benchmark and offers staging and cloning tooling, support in eight languages, a built in APM, and an enterprise tier with SOC 2 and ISO 27001. If you need those, it is worth it. If you want the fastest site for the lowest monthly cost, the test data points at Rocket.net.
What is persistent object cache and why did both fail it?
It is a cache, usually Redis, that stores database query results between page loads. The WordPress Hosting Benchmark plugin reported it as failed on both test sites. On a content site the impact is small; on WooCommerce or any query heavy site it matters, so ask either host about Redis availability on your plan before committing.
How old is this test data?
The benchmarks were run between 20 March and 28 April 2023 on two matched test sites. The pricing in this article was checked on 23 September 2026 and is current. I have kept the two clearly separated rather than implying the speed tests are recent.
Was the comparison completely fair?
Almost. The monitoring, load tests and server benchmark all ran against matched installs. The one exception is the GTmetrix comparison, where the Kinsta page weighed 5.18 MB and the Rocket.net page 3.11 MB. A lighter page scores better on any host, so I have flagged that result as directional rather than decisive.
Related reading
- WP Engine versus Rocket.net versus Cloudways, performance tested
- WP Engine prices, and why its entry plan allows fewer visits than shared hosting
- Cloudways pricing, the host with no renewal price
- Black Friday hosting deals, ranked by four year cost
- WP Rocket pricing, which Rocket.net bundles free
- How I test, verify and update everything on this site
Disclosure: the Rocket.net link on this page is an affiliate link and I earn a commission if you buy through it, at no extra cost to you. The Kinsta link is not an affiliate link and earns me nothing, because I am not in their programme. I am telling you that because the test data favours the product I get paid on, and you should be able to weigh that yourself. Every screenshot here is from my own test sites, run between 20 March and 28 April 2023. All pricing was read off each company's own pricing page on 23 September 2026. Where a comparison was not like for like, such as the GTmetrix page weights, I have said so. You can read exactly how I test, verify and update everything on this site.
