Widget performance
How heavy is the Smartsupp chat widget?
DebugBear did not publish a download figure for Smartsupp. Here is what they did measure, and how to get the number for your own installation.
Last checked 1 September 2026
Widget size/Smartsupp
The short answer
How big is the Smartsupp chat widget?
DebugBear did not publish a download size for Smartsupp. They did measure JavaScript execution at 1000ms, which is the number a visitor actually feels. Measure your own installation in the Network tab rather than trusting any published figure, including this one.
DebugBear measured about a second of JavaScript execution time.
What Smartsupp is
Live chat with video recordings of visitor sessions and an AI shopping assistant.
How it compares
| Widget | Download | JS execution |
|---|---|---|
| Tawk.to | 749 KB | Not published |
| Zendesk Chat | 533 KB | 991 ms |
| Drift | 464 KB | Not published |
| LiveChat | 385 KB | Not published |
| Intercom | 301 KB | Not published |
| Crisp | 155 KB | Not published |
| LiveAgent | 79 KB | Not published |
| TGLiveChat | ~26 KB | not in the test |
Competitor figures are DebugBear's, updated 10 November 2025. The TGLiveChat figure is our own measurement, with the method on the widget size page.
Where Smartsupp is the better choice
Session recording built in, which is genuinely useful for diagnosing a broken checkout.
Where we are different
A fraction of the JavaScript execution time on the visitor device.
Worth being plain about the trade: TGLiveChat is not a helpdesk. There is no ticketing, no SLA engine, no assignment rules and no reporting suite. If you were using those, a lighter widget is not a saving, it is a downgrade. If you were not, you were carrying the weight of a product you never opened.
Measuring your own installation
Every published figure, including ours, is somebody else's configuration. Open DevTools, go to the Network tab, filter by the vendor domain and hard reload. Read the transfer column, not the resource size column. Then look at the Performance tab for scripting time. Two minutes, and it is the only number that describes your site.
The bottom line
Smartsupp's download size is not published, so measure it before drawing a conclusion. A heavy widget attached to a helpdesk your team lives in is a fair trade. A heavy widget attached to a chat bubble nobody answers is not.
Defer it before you replace it. That is the cheaper fix and it usually works.
Frequently asked questions
How big is the Smartsupp chat widget?
Does the Smartsupp widget hurt Core Web Vitals?
How do I make Smartsupp load faster?
How do I measure this myself?
Is there a lighter alternative to Smartsupp?
What does Smartsupp do well?
Sources and references
- DebugBear: How Do Different Chat Widgets Impact Site Performance? Published 14 July 2019, updated 10 November 2025. Source of the Smartsupp figures on this page.
- Google: Core Web Vitals What widget weight actually affects, and how.
- Chrome DevTools: Network reference The transfer versus resource size distinction used above.
Measurements of Smartsupp belong to DebugBear and are cited for comparison. We measure our own widget and nobody else's.