diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index 33ee644ea68..ca0f329466f 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -204,6 +204,7 @@ Hamza Mobeen
 Harald Armin Massa
 Harshna
 Henk-Jaap Wagenaar
+Henry Schreiner
 Holger Kohr
 Hugo van Kemenade
 Hui Wang (coldnight)
diff --git a/changelog/14687.improvement.rst b/changelog/14687.improvement.rst
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..04bef6173c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog/14687.improvement.rst
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The default fd-level output capturing (``--capture=fd``) now skips reading the capture buffer for tests which produce no output, reducing per-test overhead in large test suites.
diff --git a/src/_pytest/capture.py b/src/_pytest/capture.py
index f9f8f9e4a28..b914bc2831c 100644
--- a/src/_pytest/capture.py
+++ b/src/_pytest/capture.py
@@ -566,6 +566,9 @@ class FDCaptureBinary(FDCaptureBase[bytes]):
 
     def snap(self) -> bytes:
         self._assert_state("snap", ("started", "suspended"))
+        # Avoid seek/read/truncate in the common case of no output.
+        if os.fstat(self.tmpfile.fileno()).st_size == 0:
+            return self.EMPTY_BUFFER
         self.tmpfile.seek(0)
         res = self.tmpfile.buffer.read()
         self.tmpfile.seek(0)
@@ -588,6 +591,9 @@ class FDCapture(FDCaptureBase[str]):
 
     def snap(self) -> str:
         self._assert_state("snap", ("started", "suspended"))
+        # Avoid seek/read/truncate in the common case of no output.
+        if os.fstat(self.tmpfile.fileno()).st_size == 0:
+            return self.EMPTY_BUFFER
         self.tmpfile.seek(0)
         res = self.tmpfile.read()
         self.tmpfile.seek(0)