Tax season opens with a quiet failure that will affect millions of Americans and that most of them will never see quantified: the websites they rely on to file their taxes are, for the most part, not built for the device in their pocket.

An analysis by VWO.com, a digital experience optimization platform, compiled publicly available Google PageSpeed Insights data for 12 of the most widely used U.S. tax filing websites. The publicly available performance scores reveal a stark picture. Six out of 12 platforms, a full half, score below 50 out of 100 on mobile performance, according to Google’s own metrics. The platforms scoring below this threshold include several well-known names in tax preparation, as well as the IRS’s own Free File portal, which recorded the lowest mobile score of any platform tested at 22 out of 100.

The finding matters because of who files taxes on a phone. Pew Research has consistently documented that lower-income Americans, younger adults, and Black and Hispanic adults are significantly more likely to rely on smartphones as their primary, or only, way to access the internet. A tax platform that works well on a desktop but collapses on mobile is, in practice, a platform that works for some taxpayers and not others.

The Numbers: Who Passes, Who Fails

The analysis compiled publicly available data from Google PageSpeed Insights and scored each platform on a 100-point scale weighted across mobile performance (30%), desktop performance (30%), mobile speed (20%), and desktop speed (20%). All scores reflect Google’s standardized testing methodology. A mobile score below 50 was classified as below-threshold performance.

Here’s how every platform performed on mobile:

Source: Publicly available Google PageSpeed Insights data, January 2026. Threshold: 50/100.

Two patterns emerge from the publicly available data. First, every free platform passes the mobile threshold. FreeTaxUSA records a perfect 100; Taxhawk hits 91; even OLT, the lowest-scoring free option, reaches 76. Second, the below-threshold scores cluster primarily among paid services and the government’s own portal. The data suggests that taxpayers using free filing options are, on average, encountering better-performing mobile experiences than those using paid alternatives.

The IRS Free File Problem

The IRS Free File page exists specifically to give lower-income taxpayers a no-cost path to filing. It is, by design, a digital equity tool. According to Google PageSpeed Insights, its mobile performance score is 22 out of 100, the lowest of any platform in the analysis. Its desktop score is 59, leaving a 37-point gap between how the same page performs depending on which device is used to access it.

That gap is worth noting in context. The government portal designed to help taxpayers who are statistically more likely to be filing on a phone recorded the lowest mobile performance score of all platforms analyzed. Google PageSpeed Insights data shows the page takes 5.5 seconds to load on mobile, compared to 0.9 seconds for FreeTaxUSA. Industry research has generally found that load times beyond 3 seconds are associated with increased user abandonment.

When Seconds Matter: The Speed Divide

Speed compounds the mobile performance picture. According to Google PageSpeed Insights, the two fastest-loading platforms, FreeTaxUSA and Taxhawk, both load in 0.9 seconds on mobile. Both are free. The slowest-loading platform recorded a load time of 11.0 seconds, a 12.2x gap. The data shows a general pattern: free platforms clustered at the faster end of the spectrum, while several paid platforms recorded notably longer load times.

For context, Google’s own research has found that as mobile page load time increases from 1 second to 5 seconds, the probability of a user bouncing increases by 90%. For a taxpayer trying to file on a lunch break or during a limited window of free time, these differences in load speed can meaningfully affect the filing experience.

What Free Platforms Get Right

Perhaps the most notable pattern in the data is how consistently free platforms outperform paid ones on Google’s performance metrics. Across all four free platforms tested (FreeTaxUSA, Taxhawk, Cash App Taxes, and OLT) the average overall score is 86.28. Across the six paid platforms, it’s 54.74. That’s a 57.6% performance difference in favor of the platforms that cost nothing to use.

Commenting on the analysis, Sparsh Gupta, who led the research, said: “The publicly available data from Google shows that free tax platforms load 4x faster and score 57% higher on usability than their paid competitors. In 2026, there’s no excuse for a tax website that takes 11 seconds to load; that’s an eternity when someone is trying to file before a deadline.”

The Bigger Picture: Tax Filing as a Digital Access Issue

Tax filing is not optional. It is one of the few digital interactions the federal government effectively requires of nearly every working adult. When the platforms that serve this function, both private and public, record low performance scores on mobile according to Google’s own measurement tools, it raises questions about digital access for the tens of millions of Americans who rely primarily on their phones.

The analysis doesn’t measure who is affected; it measures publicly available platform performance data. But the well-documented overlap between mobile-dependent populations (younger, lower-income, rural) and the populations most likely to use free or low-cost filing tools makes the IRS Free File score of 22 especially noteworthy. The gateway to free tax filing recorded the lowest mobile performance score of any platform analyzed.

Nearly 150 million Americans will file taxes this season. For those doing it on a phone, the Google PageSpeed data compiled in this analysis suggests that free filing platforms are, on the whole, delivering stronger mobile performance than paid alternatives and the government’s own portal.

Methodology

This analysis compiled publicly available data from Google PageSpeed Insights in January 2026. All performance scores and load times are generated by Google’s standardized testing methodology and are independently verifiable by anyone using the same tool. Twelve major U.S. tax filing websites were tested on their primary online filing entry pages. The Overall Score (out of 100) was calculated using a weighted formula applied to the Google data: Mobile Performance Score (30%), Desktop Performance Score (30%), Mobile Speed Score (20%, normalized from load time), and Desktop Speed Score (20%, normalized from load time). Free platforms were defined as services offering full federal filing at no cost for most users. Paid platforms require payment for standard filings. This analysis is based solely on website performance metrics and does not evaluate the accuracy, features, security, or overall quality of any tax filing service.

Data Sources

Google PageSpeed Insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/

Full Research Dataset: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g-2MnQstDMqF2VMZFzZ-6CmNbFXVPi7Cnhek75KX-lc/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Study by: VWO.com (https://vwo.com/). A leading website optimization platform that helps businesses run A/B tests and improve their digital experiences.

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