diff --git a/backend/open_webui/retrieval/web/utils.py b/backend/open_webui/retrieval/web/utils.py
index e1f6eaf58d..3869c4ee52 100644
--- a/backend/open_webui/retrieval/web/utils.py
+++ b/backend/open_webui/retrieval/web/utils.py
@@ -729,6 +729,8 @@ class SafeWebBaseLoader(WebBaseLoader):
             trust_env (bool, optional): set to True if using proxy to make web requests, for example
                 using http(s)_proxy environment variables. Defaults to False.
         """
+        # lxml parses scraped pages far faster than the html.parser default
+        kwargs.setdefault('default_parser', 'lxml')
         super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
         self.trust_env = trust_env
 
diff --git a/backend/requirements.txt b/backend/requirements.txt
index a2c11ad5b6..c6cfb50507 100644
--- a/backend/requirements.txt
+++ b/backend/requirements.txt
@@ -77,6 +77,7 @@ unstructured==0.22.31
 nltk==3.9.4
 Markdown==3.10.2
 beautifulsoup4==4.14.3
+lxml==6.1.1
 pypandoc==1.17
 pandas==3.0.3
 openpyxl==3.1.5
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 7fee1b560e..ef3003da2d 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -84,6 +84,7 @@ dependencies = [
     "nltk==3.9.4",
     "Markdown==3.10.2",
     "beautifulsoup4==4.14.3",
+    "lxml==6.1.1",
     "pypandoc==1.17",
     "pandas==3.0.3",
     "openpyxl==3.1.5",
diff --git a/uv.lock b/uv.lock
index 2191f0d19c..8d8de336a5 100644
--- a/uv.lock
+++ b/uv.lock
@@ -3036,6 +3036,7 @@ dependencies = [
     { name = "langchain-text-splitters" },
     { name = "ldap3" },
     { name = "loguru" },
+    { name = "lxml" },
     { name = "markdown" },
     { name = "mcp" },
     { name = "msoffcrypto-tool" },
@@ -3175,6 +3176,7 @@ requires-dist = [
     { name = "langchain-text-splitters", specifier = "==1.1.2" },
     { name = "ldap3", specifier = "==2.9.1" },
     { name = "loguru", specifier = "==0.7.3" },
+    { name = "lxml", specifier = "==6.1.1" },
     { name = "mariadb", marker = "extra == 'mariadb'", specifier = "==1.1.14" },
     { name = "markdown", specifier = "==3.10.2" },
     { name = "mcp", specifier = "==1.27.2" },