Safari loads extremely slow

You already performed a lot of troubleshooting. Consider using EtreCheck. A description and instructions for posting its report in a reply to this Discussion can be found here: How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report - Apple Community. Be sure to grant it Full Disk Access, and run it in the problematic User Account, ideally immediately following the onset of problems.

It was excruciating for me too - I switched to Safari/Ventura for the sole purpose of User Profiles as Safari was always so much more zippy. Also tried all the other options to no avail.

I'm not sure what it might be, but I came looking in the forums and someone mentioned turning off Private Relay in iCloud+.

So, mine was already off, but I switched it back on and things seem to load quicker now. Switching it back off doesn't seem to slow down either.

I'm not sure if this is temporary or not, but maybe toggling the Private Relay option in iCloud might have kicked Safari in the head (or at least how it routes traffic or DNS). I'll report back later to see if it's a permanent "fix".

It was excruciating for me too - I switched to Safari/Sonoma for the sole purpose of User Profiles as Safari was always so much more zippy. Also tried all the other options to no avail.

I'm not sure what it might be, but I came looking in the forums and someone mentioned turning off Private Relay in iCloud+.

So, mine was already off, but I switched it back on and things seem to load quicker now. Switching it back off doesn't seem to slow down either.

I'm not sure if this is temporary or not, but maybe toggling the Private Relay option in iCloud might have kicked Safari in the head (or at least how it routes traffic or DNS). I'll report back later to see if it's a permanent "fix".