Man, remember when Airbnb’s app used to feel kinda... sluggish? Like you’d tap on a listing and there’d be this awkward pause before anything happened? Turns out their engineering team was just as frustrated as we were. But here’s the cool part – they didn’t just throw more servers at the problem. Instead, they invented this thing called the Page Performance Score (PPS), and honestly? More apps should steal this idea.
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| What their performance dashboards probably look like (I’m guessing) |
Why Airbnb Needed PPS
So here’s the deal – Airbnb’s iOS engineers were stuck in this endless loop:
- Devs would say “it works fine on my machine”
- QA would report random slowness
- Users would complain but couldn’t explain what exactly was slow
They needed a way to measure app performance the same way they tracked business metrics. Hence, PPS was born.
The Four Pillars of PPS
From what I’ve gathered, Airbnb’s score looks at:
- Load Time: From tap to fully interactive
- Responsiveness: How smooth scrolling/tapping feels
- Stability: No weird freezes or crashes
- Efficiency: Not murdering your battery
Kinda genius when you think about it – instead of arguing about what “fast enough” means, they turned it into a number anyone can understand.
How They Actually Built This
Now, I wasn’t in the room when they built this (obviously), but from their tech talks and blog posts, here’s my understanding of the magic:
Instrumentation Overload
They went absolutely nuts with measurement:
- Custom Swift code to track every micro-interaction
- Xcode metrics (but like, on steroids)
- Even some machine learning to spot patterns
The Secret Sauce
What makes PPS different from regular metrics:
- Combines technical + user experience data
- Scores every screen individually
- Updates in near real-time
One engineer apparently described it as “giving every screen in the app a credit score.” That... actually makes sense?
The Nitty-Gritty Tech Stuff
Here’s a simplified version of how they probably calculate scores (don’t @ me Airbnb devs if I’m slightly off):
func calculatePPS() -> Double {
let loadTimeScore = min(1.0, 2000 / actualLoadTimeMs)
let fpsScore = averageFPS / 60.0
let crashScore = didCrash ? 0.8 : 1.0
return (loadTimeScore * 0.4) + (fpsScore * 0.3) + (crashScore * 0.3)
}
Of course the real version is way more complex – this is just to give you the gist.
What Changed After PPS?
The results were kinda wild:
| Metric |
Improvement |
| Listing Page Load |
1.8s → 1.1s |
| Scroll Jank |
Reduced by 60% |
| App Store Rating |
4.2 → 4.6 |
But the real win? Developers finally had data instead of just opinions about performance.
Why This Matters For Other Apps
Here’s what I think other teams should steal from Airbnb’s approach:
- Make performance visible – if you don’t measure it, it doesn’t get prioritized
- Combine metrics – single numbers are easier to rally around
- Score everything – creates healthy competition between teams
Seriously, why don’t more apps do this? It’s not like Airbnb has some secret NASA tech – they just decided performance mattered enough to measure properly.
The Human Side of PPS
What’s really interesting is how PPS changed team dynamics:
- Product managers could finally understand performance tradeoffs
- Engineers had proof when they needed time to optimize
- Designers saw how animations impacted scores
One team member joked that PPS “replaced a thousand pointless Slack arguments.” Amen to that.
Where They’re Taking This Next
From what I’ve heard, Airbnb’s still iterating on PPS:
- Adding more real-user data (not just lab tests)
- Experimenting with predictive scoring
- Maybe open-sourcing parts of the system? (Fingers crossed)
They’ve basically created a whole new way to think about app quality – and I’m here for it.
Final Thoughts
In a world where most apps keep getting slower while phones get faster, Airbnb’s PPS is a rare success story. It proves that:
“What gets measured gets improved – but only if you measure the right things.”
Other tech companies should take notes. Your users might not know what ‘PPS’ stands for, but they’ll definitely notice when your app stops feeling like molasses.
Want to nerd out on the technical details? Check out Airbnb’s original post – it’s surprisingly readable for engineering content!
