What is the average internet speed in the US?

The typical US home broadband connection downloads at about 314 Mbps and uploads at about 73 Mbps, with 12 ms latency. Those are the median fixed-broadband figures in Ookla's Speedtest Global Index for September 2026. On mobile, the US median is about 191 Mbps down, 9.7 Mbps up and 27 ms. Half of tests come in faster than the median and half slower.

Median and average aren't the same number

Ookla publishes two figures for each country. The median is the middle result: line up every test from slowest to fastest and take the one in the middle. The mean is the plain average. For US fixed broadband in September 2026, the mean is about 403 Mbps down and 217 Mbps up, well above the median.

The gap comes from fast connections. A minority of homes on gigabit and multi-gig fiber pull the mean upward, while the median isn't moved much by a few very high results. If you want to know what a typical connection looks like, use the median. The upload gap is especially wide: a mean of about 217 Mbps against a median of about 73. That fits a country where some homes have symmetrical fiber and many more are on cable or wireless plans with much smaller uploads.

How fast it's growing

A year earlier, in Ookla's September 2025 index, the US fixed median was about 290 Mbps down and 48.5 Mbps up. Over the year, the median download rose about 8% (314.35 ÷ 289.76 ≈ 1.085). Median upload rose about 50% (72.62 ÷ 48.50 ≈ 1.497). Upload is catching up faster than download.

Ookla's figures cover a rolling three-month window and are updated mid-month, so the numbers shift a little every month. Check the live index for the latest.

How the US ranks

In the same index, the US ranks 7th for median fixed-broadband download speed and 11th for median mobile download speed. Ranking on the median rather than the mean matters here. On the mean, the US fixed figure ranks lower, at 10th, even though the number itself is higher. Rankings move from month to month as other countries' figures change, so treat them as a rough position rather than a fixed score.

Where common connection types sit against the median

The median sits well above what several common connection types typically deliver, so many perfectly normal homes test below it:

• Satellite. Starlink's specifications give typical downloads of 25–220 Mbps and uploads of 5–20 Mbps.
• 5G home internet. Verizon's published typical speeds run from 25–85 Mbps on its entry 5G Home plan to 300–1,000 Mbps on its top plan, with uploads from 5 to 75 Mbps depending on the plan.
• Fiber and cable. Gigabit and multi-gig fiber plans test far above the median, while entry cable plans may sit below it.

Being below the median usually says more about which technology reaches your address than about whether your connection is working properly.

What these numbers do and don't measure

The index summarizes speed tests that people chose to run on Speedtest. That makes it a useful snapshot, with a few limits:

• It measures tests, not plans. Many tests run over Wi-Fi, so the result reflects home networks as well as the lines behind them.
• People test for a reason. Some test because something feels slow, others because they just upgraded. Neither group is a random sample.
• It's one tool's servers. Other test services measure to different servers and can report different numbers for the same connection.

The average vs what you need

Being below the median doesn't mean your internet is bad. The FCC's broadband benchmark is 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, and the FCC reports that 96.9% of Americans have access to a fixed terrestrial service at that speed. A 100 Mbps plan is about a third of the median and still runs several 4K streams. Is 100 Mbps good shows how far it stretches.

What matters is how much your home uses at the same time, not how you rank nationally. The good internet speed guide works that out by household size and activity.

How to compare your own result

1. Compare with your plan first. Your plan's advertised speed is the fair benchmark for your result, not the national median.
2. Test on a wired device, then on Wi-Fi. Run SpeedMetric's speed test on a computer plugged into the router to see what the line delivers. Then test where you actually use the internet. How to test internet speed covers getting a clean reading.
3. Expect differences between tools. SpeedMetric measures to a nearby Cloudflare server, and Ookla measures to its own servers. A gap of a few percent between them is normal.
4. Compare latency carefully. SpeedMetric reports idle ping and jitter. A ping in the low tens of milliseconds is in line with the national figure, and what is a good ping explains what's comfortable for games and calls.

If your wired result is far below what you pay for, the national average isn't the issue. Why a speed test is lower than advertised walks through the usual causes. For a phone, compare a mobile data test with the mobile median instead.