Is it better to manually add the contents of google fonts stylesheets?

[Alex Zaworski]

I ran into this earlier today— is it more performant to add the contents of a stylesheet from google fonts (eg this one) and save your self the request or to include it as a link? I’d assume the former but I don’t usually see that done.

All of this assuming, of course, you’re not loading them async

[Shikkediel]

I guess it mostly depends on how fast your own server is…

[Alex Zaworski]

Why would that change anything? It’s still loading the fonts from google’s servers, but as far as I can tell this dodges a request for the css file (assuming you add it to the rest of your styles).

edit: I suppose if your server were slow enough that it took more time to serve the ~4k than it took to request + download from google then that would make sense.

Also I guess if the URL for the font sources ever changed you’d be preeeeetty screwed.

[Shikkediel]

I suppose a single request plays less of a role than response time and other optimisation (compression for example). A caching advantage is likier to be the case if you use a CDN for a JS library, not so much with fonts I think. So my own preference would be to serve them from the site itself.

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