What broadband speed do I need?
Find the broadband speed that suits how your household actually uses the internet, without being sold more than you need.
Around 19.4 Mbps download and 6.6 Mbps upload
A package between 16 and 22 Mbps should suit this household. Paying for much more than that is unlikely to make anything feel faster.
Because this household games or makes video calls, latency and stability matter more than raw speed. A faster package will not fix high ping or jitter.
What this assumes
- Estimates a realistic simultaneous peak rather than adding every activity together, because households rarely do everything at once.
- Includes about 20% spare capacity so the connection is not running at its limit whenever the house is busy.
- Gaming and video calls depend more on latency and stability than on raw speed. A faster package does not fix high ping, jitter or packet loss.
- Wi-Fi, not the broadband line, is the most common cause of slow speeds inside a home.
Method version 2026-07-27.1. How we work this out.
Most households need less than they are sold
Speed is the easiest thing for a provider to advertise, so it is what gets advertised. In practice, a household of four streaming, browsing and working from home rarely needs anything like a gigabit.
The estimate above models a realistic simultaneous peak rather than adding every activity together. Everyone in the house doing their most demanding thing at exactly the same moment is the exception, not the rule — and sizing a connection for that means paying for capacity that sits idle.
Speed is not the only thing that matters
For gaming and video calls, latency and consistency matter more than raw throughput. A connection with plenty of speed but high jitter will still produce stuttering calls, and upgrading the package will not fix it.
Upload speed deserves attention too, particularly if you back up to the cloud or send large files. It is usually far lower than the headline download figure — see the upload time calculator.
Before you upgrade
If your internet feels slow today, a faster package may not be the answer. Wi-Fi is the most common bottleneck inside a home, and a poor spot can cost far more speed than the difference between two packages. Test on a wired connection first, if you can.
To see exactly where the demand in your home comes from, use the household bandwidth calculator.