PageSpeed Insights Setup

Why Orino needs your own key

Performance checks for LCP, CLS, INP, and TTFB come from Google’s PageSpeed Insights API. Without a key, requests use Google’s shared anonymous quota, which is tiny and often exhausted after a single audit.

Orino does not provide a shared key. Every user authenticates with their own free key. This is standard practice for CLI tools built on Google APIs, not a limitation specific to Orino.

Note

A free Google Cloud key gives you 25,000 PSI requests per day. That is far more than any individual or small team will use.

Get your free key

1. Go to console.cloud.google.com
2. Create a project, or select an existing one
3. Search for PageSpeed Insights API in the API library
4. Click Enable
5. Go to APIs & Services, then Credentials
6. Click Create Credentials, then API Key
7. Copy the key

Optional: restrict the key to PSI only

8. Click the key, go to API restrictions, click Restrict key, select PageSpeed Insights API, and click Save

Restricting the key limits what an attacker can do if it ever leaks. An unrestricted key can be used against any Google API billed to your account.

Use the key

Per command

npx orino-cli audit --url https://yoursite.com --psi-key YOUR_KEY

Persistent (recommended)

export ORINO_PSI_KEY=your_key_here

Add that line to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc. Once set, every audit picks it up automatically with no flag needed.

What happens without a key

The audit still runs and completes. The four live performance checks (LCP, CLS, INP, and TTFB) are skipped rather than failed. The terminal shows PageSpeed API unavailable — performance checks skipped next to each one.

Codebase performance checks (hero image lazy loading, missing fetchpriority, raw <img> tags, and images without explicit dimensions) still run regardless of whether a key is present. Only the PSI-dependent metrics are affected.

Skipped checks are excluded from both sides of the score calculation. They do not penalise your score.

Caution

If you see a 429 rate limit error without a key, this is expected. The shared anonymous quota resets on Google’s schedule, not yours. Get a free key rather than retrying.

Troubleshooting

Error	Cause	Fix
429 without a key	Shared anonymous quota exhausted	Get a free API key
429 with a key	Daily quota for that Google Cloud project exceeded	Wait 24 hours, or create a second project
403	API not enabled on the project, or key restricted to the wrong API	Enable PageSpeed Insights API in your Cloud project credentials
Redirect warnings in output	PSI followed a redirect (for example, non-www to www)	Informational only, not an error