diff --git a/release/scripts/startup/bl_operators/wm.py b/release/scripts/startup/bl_operators/wm.py
index 6d47fef371c..382c7344961 100644
--- a/release/scripts/startup/bl_operators/wm.py
+++ b/release/scripts/startup/bl_operators/wm.py
@@ -1246,10 +1246,24 @@ class WM_OT_doc_view_manual(Operator):
         if verbose:
             print("online manual check for: '%s'... " % rna_id)
         from fnmatch import fnmatchcase
+
+        import re
+        # Match characters that have a special meaning to `fnmatch`.
+        # If any of these characters are used we must let `fnmatch` run it's own matching logic.
+        # However, in most cases a literal prefix is used making it considerably faster to do a
+        # simple `startswith` check before performing a full match, see #104581.
+        re_match_non_speical = re.compile("^[^?*\\[]+").match
+
         # XXX, for some reason all RNA ID's are stored lowercase
         # Adding case into all ID's isn't worth the hassle so force lowercase.
         rna_id = rna_id.lower()
         for pattern, url_suffix in url_mapping:
+
+            # Simple optimization, makes a big difference (over 50x speedup).
+            non_special_end = re_match_non_speical(pattern).end()
+            if non_special_end > 0 and (not rna_id.startswith(pattern[:non_special_end])):
+                continue
+
             if fnmatchcase(rna_id, pattern):
                 if verbose:
                     print("            match found: '%s' --> '%s'" % (pattern, url_suffix))