You haven't measured it, and the large number of questions and answers on just Unix StackExchange, without checking all of the others from AskUbuntu to SuperUse

You haven't measured it, and the large number of questions and answers on just Unix StackExchange, without checking all of the others from AskUbuntu to SuperUser that are like https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/327544/5132 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/327544/5132 indicates that yes, people do use tput in scripts as a matter of course.