How to Test and Understand Your Internet Speed
A speed test takes 60 seconds and tells you exactly what your connection can handle. Here is how to test properly and what the results mean.
How to Get Accurate Results
Run our Internet Speed Test to check your current speeds. For accurate results, close other browser tabs and applications, pause any active downloads or streaming, and run the test twice - once over Wi-Fi and once plugged directly into the router with an Ethernet cable. The difference between wired and wireless results tells you whether a slow connection is your ISP or your Wi-Fi.
What the Numbers Mean
| Activity | Minimum Speed | Comfortable Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Web browsing and email | 1 Mbps | 10 Mbps |
| HD streaming (1080p) | 5 Mbps | 15 Mbps |
| 4K streaming | 25 Mbps | 50 Mbps |
| Video calls (Zoom, Teams) | 3 Mbps up and down | 10 Mbps up and down |
| Online gaming | 3 Mbps / ping under 50ms | 15 Mbps / ping under 20ms |
| Multiple simultaneous users | 25 Mbps total | 100 Mbps total |
| Working from home (large files) | 50 Mbps upload | 100 Mbps upload |
Mbps Is Not MB/s, and This Confuses Everyone
Speed tests and ISP plans measure in megabits per second (Mbps). Your browser's download dialog shows megabytes per second (MB/s). There are 8 bits in a byte, so a 400 Mbps plan downloads files at about 50 MB/s, and that factor-of-eight gap is behind half of all "I'm only getting a fraction of my speed!" complaints. If the speed test says 400 and Steam says 50, nothing is wrong. Same number, different units.
The other two numbers on a test deserve ten seconds of understanding. Ping is the round trip time for a single packet, it's about distance and congestion, not bandwidth, and it's what gaming actually cares about. Jitter is how much that ping wobbles between packets; high jitter with fine average ping is why a video call can stutter on a connection that tests beautifully.
My Speed Is Lower Than My Plan - Why?
Test via Ethernet first. If wired speed matches your plan but Wi-Fi is slower, the problem is in your wireless setup - try changing the channel or moving closer to the router. If wired speed is also below your plan, contact your ISP or check signal levels on your modem at 192.168.100.1. Consistently low speeds at the ISP level usually indicate a line problem or modem issue that needs a technician visit.
A caveat about very fast plans: past roughly 500 Mbps, the bottleneck is frequently the measuring equipment, not the line. An older laptop's Wi-Fi tops out well below gigabit, a cheap USB Ethernet dongle might be a 100 Mbps model (check for "Fast Ethernet" in its name, which in a triumph of marketing means the slow kind), and even good Wi-Fi loses to a cable at these rates. Gigabit customers testing at 400 over Wi-Fi are usually seeing their laptop's limit, not the ISP shortchanging them.
Building a Case for Your ISP
One bad speed test proves nothing, evenings are slower than 4 am everywhere, and the ISP's support script knows it. What actually moves a complaint forward is a pattern: run the same test, wired, same device, at a few fixed times a day for a week and write the numbers down (or screenshot them, they carry timestamps). Ten results showing 60% of the advertised speed every single evening is a conversation the ISP can't wave off with "please restart your router".
Before you call, restart the modem once anyway so support can't spend twenty minutes on it, and know your plan's advertised numbers exactly. In several countries regulators require ISPs to deliver a stated minimum, in the EU you can formally reference the measured shortfall, so those logged tests can be worth actual money off the bill. Persistence pays here more often than people expect; line faults that only degrade speed (rather than killing the connection) routinely sit unfixed for months because nobody documented them.