What’s the perfect amount of speed for an internet connection? Most of us don’t necessarily need the fastest (and most expensive) tier of broadband service that our providers offer, but oftentimes the lowest and slowest tier simply isn’t enough. So, how exactly do you find a happy medium?
The short answer to these questions is this: For the average household in the US, roughly 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) for downloads and 20Mbps for uploads should be more than adequate. That’s fast enough to stream movies, play online games, and have all the Zoom and FaceTime calls you want to, without any hiccups.
The long answer? It’s complicated. The ideal amount of internet speed will vary from household to household. After all, there’s a massive difference between an apartment with a single computer on the web and a house filled from basement to attic with internet-connected laptops, smartphones, game consoles, tablets, smart home devices, and more.
You can use a few different methods to determine the exact amount of bandwidth you truly need, or you can just take our advice. But in either case, let’s examine internet speed history and basics to explain how we arrived at the numbers above.
Understanding the Basics: Megabits vs. Gigabits, Up vs. Down
If you know how internet speeds work, feel free to skip ahead.
Internet (and network) throughput (that’s the proper term, but everyone calls it “speed”) is measured in bits per second. That’s how many bits can travel from one point to another (say, from your PC to a web server). One favorite metaphor is to think of it like water. The bigger the “pipe,” the more liquid (bits) that can move through it per second, which means everything goes faster.
For years, the main measure used was kilobits per second (abbreviated Kbps or sometimes Kbit/s). After the invention of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, the average speed online was only 14.4 Kbps. That’s how fast our modems were. The maximum speed that analog phone lines could reach at the time was 56Kbps.
But the internet required new tech to get up to speed. According to FutureTimeline.net, the global average internet speed hit 1 Megabit per second (Mbps) by the mid-2000s. That’s a thousand times as fast as 1 Kbps.
As of June 2024, according to Ookla, our sister site and purveyor of the industry standard SpeedTest.net, the median speed found globally is 101.37 Mbps on fixed broadband connections. (These are the internet connections involving a wire coming directly to your house.) Mobile data connections like you get with your mobile provider are getting faster, too: Two years ago, they were at 50.0Mbps, and today they’re at 92.31Mbps.
A thousand times faster than a Megabit is a Gigabit—that’s 1 billion bits. There are plenty of ISPs worldwide, including many in the US, that support one Gigabit per second (Gbps, frequently just called a “gig”). Whether you can get gig internet from a provider depends on your location and the infrastructure of the ISP’s connections in your area.
A handful of US fiber-based ISPs offer services that go to 5Gbps (AT&T Fiber), 8Gbps (Google Fiber), and even 10Gbps (California’s Sonic). One—Ziply Fiber—sells a 50-gig plan that costs as much as a monthly mortgage payment.
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ISPs offering gig and multi-gig internet services do so via fiber to the home (FttH). New tech called the “10G Platform” will allow more cable-based providers such as Spectrum and Comcast’s Xfinity to offer 10-gig speeds someday without upgrading to fiber. Don’t confuse the Gs of 5G wireless and the 10G Platform; in “5G” it means “fifth generation,” while the G in the 10G Platform is for 10-gig speeds.
All of the speeds above are measurements for downloads—what it takes to get information from the internet to your device(s). Upload speeds—data going from your device to or across the internet—are typically much slower. However, with fiber, several ISPs take advantage of the ability to have symmetrical down/up speeds—where the upload throughput is just as fast. The Speedtest Global Index for fixed broadband shows the median upload speed in the US is, as of this writing, only 45.43Mbps—just 15.6% of the US median download speed of 291.18Mbps.
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Arguably, most people can get by with slower uploads. That’s why the majority of tiers of service with an ISP have upload speeds that are so much less compared with downloads. The exception tends to be on fiber connections, where you’ll usually see symmetrical speeds down and up, full speed in both directions, because those light-based lines don’t have as much network overhead.
How Much Speed Do You Actually Need?
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines “broadband”—the catchall term for high-speed internet, regardless of the technology used for the connection—as 100Mbps for download speed and 20Mbps for upload speed. The FCC offers a “broadband speed guide,” but we put together our own.
These numbers are the absolute minimum the average web user needs in 2025. That being said, what you need today might be different. Your needs depend, of course, on what you can afford, how many devices you have connected to the internet at any given time, and what those devices will be used for. It’s a safe bet, though, that if you’re streaming video or music as a primary form of entertainment, that alone means you should shoot for the FCC’s minimum broadband number: 100Mbps downloads. Almost every US ISP has a tier to support that.
Even the notoriously slow satellite-based providers—which, thanks to the technology they use, cover 100% of the country—offer 100 Mbps speed tiers, according to BroadbandNow. (Just note that satellite providers tend to have other issues, in particular high lag times, but Starlink, in particular, is working on it.)
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Few standard households will have much to complain about if they use a 100Mbps download tier of service. At 100Mbps, you can download (not even stream) a full 4K HD movie in about 60 to 100 seconds (an hour-long 4K video takes up 45 gigabytes of storage space). Anything over that, up to 500Mbps, you’re in the sweet spot. Based on listings at BroadbandNow, the average price of the 500Mbps tier from major ISPs is about $70 per month, but again, the cost depends on the ISP and the location.
The more competition in the area, the lower the prices and the higher the speeds. This is why ISPs notoriously hate competing and try to prevent it.
Anything above 500Mbps—including Gigabit or faster connections—is overkill for most homes. For now, at least. However, if your ISP offers it affordably, it makes sense to future-proof your connection and get that speed. It’s like buying a computer or phone: Get the fastest you can afford, to put off an upgrade for as long as possible. Also, keep in mind that your ISP is likely to raise prices over time.
Calculate Your Bandwidth Needs
(Credit: Earthlink)
Want a more specific number to shoot for when ordering service? Try a bandwidth calculator. BroadbandNow offers one that asks about your devices, how often you video conference or play online games, and your geographic location. Using that information, it will suggest a provider and service tier that will most likely meet your needs.
Consumer Reports has a different kind of bandwidth calculator—one that takes your specific devices and what they do into account. I told it my house has a full 15 devices that are doing everything (streaming, browsing, emailing, sharing, gaming, video conferencing, and running surveillance cams/doorbells), and it pegged our requirement at 870Mbps. Earthlink’s calculator is similar, but more conservative in its estimates.
Remember, if your internet feels slow or laggy, it may not be the ISP connection. It could be that your household has older network technology—an aging router, for example, supporting old Wi-Fi standards, can be a big bottleneck. Consider updating your router to the latest and greatest, such as the Wi-Fi 7 standard. You may also have freeloaders using your Wi-Fi; here’s how to find and boot them.
Are you getting the throughput you’re paying for? Test your internet speed now.
Disclosure: Ookla is owned by PCMag’s parent company, Ziff Davis.
About Eric Griffith
Senior Editor, Features
