What internet speed do I actually need?
Seven quick questions about your household. Get a specific Mbps tier and the connection types that fit.
Speed recommendation
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How to think about speed
The right plan is the smallest one that comfortably handles your peak evening load with a little headroom. Everything past that is margin the provider keeps.
How the recommendation works
The quiz starts from a baseline tied to household size. One person starts at 100 Mbps, two at 200, three to four at 500, and five-plus at a full gigabit. This reflects the floor most households actually need, roughly 100 Mbps of headroom per active person, not per device.
Then we layer on usage adjustments. Each simultaneous 4K stream adds 100 Mbps, because real-world 4K video from Netflix or YouTube pulls 25-50 Mbps on its own and stacks up when multiple rooms are watching. Heavy video calls or remote work adds another 100 Mbps and flags upload symmetry, the direction most cable plans skimp on. Regular large file uploads (creative work, cloud sync, media backup) do the same.
Gaming bumps the recommendation up one whole tier rather than a fixed amount, because game downloads are unpredictable but huge, and you don’t want your whole household grinding through a 150 GB patch on a 200 Mbps plan. We also flag latency-sensitive connection types at the end: fiber and cable first, 5G home and satellite last.
20+ connected devices add a flat 25% headroom. Most of those devices (smart bulbs, thermostats, doorbells) are tiny bandwidth users individually, but they add chatter and small background transfers that starve active users of their share on an undersized plan.
Finally, the result is rounded to a tier you can actually buy, 100, 200, 300, 500, 800, 1000, or 2000 Mbps, and we check whether fiber at that speed is likely to blow through your stated budget. If it is, we move cable and 5G home ahead of fiber in the connection ranking, because the best plan is the one you’ll actually pay for month after month.
The algorithm is intentionally conservative on the upper end. We’d rather recommend 500 Mbps and have you love it than push a gigabit plan that costs $30 more and never gets used. Nobody ever wrote a customer review saying “I wish they had steered me into a more expensive plan.”
Frequently asked questions
- Is there a single Mbps number that’s “right” for most people?
- For a typical household of two to four people streaming in HD/4K, handling a couple of video calls, and with 10-20 connected devices, 300-500 Mbps download is plenty. Anything much beyond that is usually sold on fear, not need. Latency and upload quality matter more than the headline number.
- Why does the quiz sometimes recommend more speed than the official FCC broadband definition?
- The FCC’s 100/20 Mbps threshold is a floor for what counts as broadband, not a recommendation. Real-world usage, especially simultaneous 4K streams, heavy WFH upload, and 20+ connected devices, stacks up fast. The quiz sizes for your actual household rather than the minimum definition.
- Does upload speed really matter that much?
- Yes, if anyone in the house does heavy video calls, cloud backup, large file uploads, or game streaming. Cable plans frequently cap upload around 20-35 Mbps regardless of download speed, so fiber’s symmetric upload is a meaningful upgrade even when the download numbers look similar.
- What about latency and ping?
- Latency is the delay between your device and the server, measured in milliseconds. Fiber typically lands in the single digits, cable in the 10-25 ms range, 5G home is variable, and satellite is the worst, even LEO options rarely match fiber. For competitive gaming and video calls, low latency matters more than raw speed.
- Will a faster plan make my Wi-Fi faster?
- Only up to a point. Once you’re past 500 Mbps, the limiting factor is usually your router, your home’s wiring, and where the router sits, not the plan. Wi-Fi 6 or 6E with the router in a central, open location often helps more than doubling the plan speed.
- Can I get gigabit speeds on my phone or tablet?
- Almost never over Wi-Fi. Modern phones top out around 500-800 Mbps on Wi-Fi 6 under great conditions, and 150-400 Mbps in practice. Gigabit plans mostly benefit wired devices or households where many users chew through bandwidth in parallel.
- What if the plan I want isn’t available at my address?
- Availability depends on your block, not your zip code. Enter your address on the availability tool after you take the quiz. It shows the actual plans, connection types, and prices at your exact location, not a regional average.