How big are website headlines, and does the industry change the answer?

Every type scale article you have read was written from taste. This one is written from measurement. We recorded the rendered type sizes on 300 websites, took the largest heading on each, and grouped the results by industry to see whether the number moves.

It moves a lot, and in a direction that says more about sales than style.

What is the median website headline size?

65px, across 300 sites where type sizes could be captured at desktop width. That is the number to argue against, not the number to copy. Half the archive sets its largest heading below it and half above, and which half you belong in is mostly decided by what your homepage is trying to do.

Which industries use the biggest type?

Retail and agency work sit at the top; utility interfaces sit at the bottom. The cleanest comparison in the table is also the one with the two largest samples: agency and studio sites run a 80px median across 48 records, while technology and SaaS sites run 60.5px across 62. A 19.5px gap between the two largest groups in the archive is not noise.

Why do agencies set larger headlines than SaaS companies?

Because they are selling different things in the same rectangle. An agency homepage sells taste, so the headline is not describing the product, it is the product demonstration. Setting it at 80px is the argument.

A SaaS homepage sells a task. The headline has to share the fold with a product screenshot, a signup field, a logo wall and usually a secondary link, and every pixel the headline takes is one the proof does not get. At 60.5px it states the value and moves out of the way. Portfolio sites land between the two at 72px across 21 records, which fits: the work is the evidence, so the name does not have to shout as hard as an agency's does.

How many typefaces does a typical website use?

2, as a median. The archive holds 429 distinct families in total, which sounds like variety until you look at the distribution. Inter alone appears on 63 sites, 21% of the 304 records. The common pattern is one workhorse sans doing almost all the work, joined by either a display face for headings or a mono for code and labels.

How should you use these numbers?

As a positioning check, not a specification. Find your industry in the table, then decide whether you want to sit at its median or deliberately break from it. A SaaS site at 80px is making a claim about being design-led, and it had better be true, because the rest of the page will be read against that promise. A directory at the same size is just harder to scan.

The other honest caveat: these are desktop measurements of the largest heading, not a full type scale. A 80px hero says nothing about whether the body text is comfortable, and body text is what people actually read. You can see the full recorded scale, weights and sizes included, on any record in the archive.