Home broadband speed test

Press Go above. The test checks your ping first, then downloads and uploads files of growing size to a nearby test server until the speed settles. It takes about 30 seconds. For the truest result, plug a computer into the router with a cable and pause other downloads and streams while it runs.

Ofcom calls 30Mb and above superfast and 300Mb and above ultrafast. Full fibre lines reach 900Mb or more, which UK comparison sites label gigabit. For most homes, 50 to 100Mb covers streaming, gaming and working from home together. Busy households with lots of 4K streaming do better on 300Mb or more.

Download speed is how fast things come to you: web pages, streams and game downloads. Upload speed is how fast you send things out: video calls, cloud backups and sending big files. Most lines download much faster than they upload. Full fibre lines often upload at the same speed they download.

Ping, or latency, is how long a tiny message takes to go to the server and back, in milliseconds. Under 30ms feels instant for online games and calls, 30 to 60ms is fine, and over 100ms starts to feel laggy.

It is how much slower replies get while your line is full, for example when someone is downloading a game. Engineers call it bufferbloat. We measure ping while the line is quiet and again while it is busy. A small gap means calls and games stay smooth when the house is busy.

Advertised speeds are averages that at least half of a provider's customers get at peak time, 8pm to 10pm. Your own speed also depends on Wi-Fi, walls, how far you are from the router, old devices and other people using the line. Testing over a cable rules out Wi-Fi, so if a wired test is well below your package, tell your provider.

Yes. The test sends and receives real data, roughly what your line moves in 15 seconds. On a fast home line that can be several hundred megabytes, so avoid running it on a capped mobile plan.

It uses an open-source speed test engine and test servers near you. It ramps the file size up until each transfer takes long enough to measure fairly, and reports the speed your line holds across many transfers, not one lucky burst. Like every speed test it measures your connection at that moment, so test a few times at different hours for the full picture.

No. If you add a postcode we keep the result against the first half of it, such as NR4, so we can show typical speeds for an area. We never store your IP address or anything that identifies you.