diff --git a/benchmarks/create-pages/README.md b/benchmarks/create-pages/README.md
index 6bcb9451f22d7..14df26a0a0b2f 100644
--- a/benchmarks/create-pages/README.md
+++ b/benchmarks/create-pages/README.md
@@ -3,3 +3,10 @@
 Stress tests creating lots of tiny pages.
 
 Defaults to building a site with 5k pages. Set the `NUM_PAGES` environment variable to change that e.g. `NUM_PAGES=25000 gatsby build`
+
+# Running the benchmark
+First install node modules required by package.json. This is needed only one time. Then run the build
+```bash
+npm install
+npm run build
+```
diff --git a/benchmarks/markdown/README.md b/benchmarks/markdown/README.md
index 2f01368d2d624..bd2643a387ab6 100644
--- a/benchmarks/markdown/README.md
+++ b/benchmarks/markdown/README.md
@@ -3,3 +3,10 @@
 Stress tests creating lots of pages rendered from Markdown.
 
 Defaults to building a site with 5k markdown pages. Set the `NUM_PAGES` environment variable to change that e.g. `NUM_PAGES=25000 gatsby build`
+
+# Running the benchmark
+First install node modules required by package.json. This is needed only one time. Then run the build
+```bash
+npm install
+npm run build
+```