Best Internet Speed Tests for 2023

The Federal Communications Commission defines broadband speeds as having downloads of at least 25 megabits per second and uploads of at least 3Mbps, but by the FCC’s own speed guide, that’s basically the bare minimum for things like streaming 4K video and sharing large files over the web. 

Internet plans with multi-gig speeds as high as 2, 3 or even 5 gigabits per second (that’s 5,000Mbps) are starting to emerge from a number of providers, including AT&T, Comcast, Frontier, Verizon Fios, Ziply Fiber and others. But plans like those are overkill for most homes, at least for now. Most ideal is a symmetrical internet connection with uploads that are just as fast as the downloads — speeds of 100Mbps would be perfectly fine for most homes.

There are a few things possibly affecting your speeds, but using a Wi-Fi connection is the most likely cause of tested speeds that are lower than the speeds your ISP runs to the home. 

Wi-Fi will almost always be slower than an Ethernet connection. Moving away from your router can further hinder your speeds. If there are walls or other obstructions between your router and the device you’re using, this could cause your internet speed to fall. 

In other instances, your internet speed can fluctuate depending on peak usage hours. Possibly worst of all, if your internet provider enforces data caps or throttles connections to help maintain overall network performance, you’ll experience noticeable hits to your internet speed. 

Keep this in mind when running a speed test and take measures to mitigate potential speed disruptions. Moving closer to the router, for example, can help get more accurate results. But for the best result, try testing over an Ethernet connection, if possible. Also, consider running a few speed tests throughout the day for an idea of how your speeds fluctuate at different times.

While both internet speed tests are good options to determine your connection’s strength, each has pros and cons. Since Fast.com is owned and operated by Netflix, it’s a great test for online streamers relying on decent bandwidth. However, it’s not as in-depth as Speedtest.net for providing analytics and doesn’t let users specify which server they’d like to connect with. Speedtest.net, on the other hand, has a strong reputation for consistency, but it has banner ads that may slightly affect its test results.

In addition to showing you the current upload and download speeds for whatever device you’re running the test on, most internet speed tests will also give you a figure called ping, which is a latency measurement measured in milliseconds. Simply put, the ping number is the time that it took for your device to send a signal to whatever distant server you connected to during the speed test, and then receive a response. Think of it like a round-trip flight time for your internet connection.

Ping will go up if you’re connecting to a server that’s very far away, or if there’s some sort of interference somewhere in the connection. Your ping might also rise slightly if you’re connecting through something like a mesh router or a range extender, where your data needs to make multiple wireless jumps before reaching the modem.

In most cases, ping differences are pretty minor, enough so that you won’t notice them without running a speed test. That said, you will start to notice high ping if you’re trying to make split-second decisions in an online multiplayer game, and it can also cause annoying delays during video call conversations.

Like ping, jitter is measured in milliseconds, but instead of measuring the time it takes your device to send data to a remote server and receive a response, jitter describes latency differences between the flow of data to various client devices on your network. If jitter gets too high, it means that data isn’t flowing to your device as efficiently as it probably should, and that can cause problems like buffering during streaming and video calls.

Speed tests won’t do anything to change the speed of your home’s Wi-Fi network, but they’re a great diagnostic tool — a quick way to check how your network is performing in various spots around your home.

The best way to put speed tests to use is to run them on your phone or laptop in various rooms throughout your house. If you find a dead zone where speeds come crashing down, you might want to consider putting a range extender in the closest room to that dead zone where speeds are strong — from there, it’ll rebroadcast your Wi-Fi signal and potentially speed things up. If you find multiple dead zones in places where you’d like to connect, it might be time to upgrade your router. For the best whole-home Wi-Fi coverage, consider going with a mesh router that uses multiple devices.