---
title: "HTTP/3"
description: "HTTP/3 is the latest version of the HTTP protocol, built on QUIC instead of TCP, offering faster connection establishment, improved multiplexing, and better performance on lossy networks."
category: "Web Security & Infrastructure"
date: "2026-03-05"
url: "https://getbeast.io/glossary/http3/"
type: "glossary"
---

# HTTP/3

**Category:** Web Security & Infrastructure | **Updated:** 2026-03-05

HTTP/3 is the latest version of the HTTP protocol, built on QUIC instead of TCP, offering faster connection establishment, improved multiplexing, and better performance on lossy networks.

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## What Is HTTP/3?
HTTP/3 is the third major version of HTTP, standardized in 2022. Unlike HTTP/2 (which uses TCP), HTTP/3 is built on **QUIC** (a UDP-based transport protocol developed by Google). QUIC provides faster connection establishment (0-RTT), improved multiplexing without head-of-line blocking, built-in encryption, and better performance on mobile and lossy networks.

## Why HTTP/3 Matters
HTTP/3 delivers measurable performance improvements, especially for mobile users and users on unreliable connections. It eliminates TCP head-of-line blocking (where one lost packet stalls all streams), establishes connections faster, and handles network switching (WiFi to cellular) seamlessly. These improvements translate to better Core Web Vitals scores.

## How to Enable HTTP/3
Enable HTTP/3 on your web server or CDN. Cloudflare, Google Cloud, and AWS CloudFront support HTTP/3. Server-side support is available in Nginx (with quiche patch), LiteSpeed, and Caddy. HTTP/3 falls back to HTTP/2 gracefully for unsupported clients.

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## Related Terms

- [HTTP/2](/glossary/http2/)
- [Page Speed](/glossary/page-speed/)
- [CDN](/glossary/cdn/)
- [SSL/TLS](/glossary/ssl-tls/)
- [Core Web Vitals](/glossary/core-web-vitals/)


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