What internet speed do you need for a PS5?

Sony doesn't publish a minimum speed for ordinary PS5 online multiplayer, and in practice almost any broadband connection is enough for it. Sony does publish figures for streaming features: PS Remote Play needs at least 5 Mbps upload and download (15 Mbps for best performance), and cloud streaming needs 13 Mbps for 1080p at minimum, with 23 Mbps recommended.

Beyond those, the speed that shapes your PS5 experience most is how quickly you can download games.

Online multiplayer: no official number

Sony's support pages don't give a Mbps figure for playing games online, so we won't make one up. For comparison, Microsoft's minimum for Xbox online play is 3 Mbps download and 0.5 Mbps upload, which shows how little data online games exchange. The game is installed on your console; only small updates about players and events cross the network.

What decides whether online matches feel good is ping, jitter and packet loss. A 1 Gbps plan with an unstable Wi-Fi link plays worse than a 50 Mbps plan on a cable. Our guide to good ping for gaming covers the targets, and what internet speed you need for gaming explains where Mbps does matter.

PS Remote Play and PlayStation Portal

Remote Play streams a game from your PS5 to a phone, PC or PlayStation Portal. Sony's Remote Play page asks for at least 5 Mbps, and its mobile setup guide recommends at least 15 Mbps upload and download for best performance.

The upload part is easy to miss. When you play away from home, your PS5 is sending video out over your home connection, so your home upload speed sets the ceiling. A cable plan with a few Mbps of upload can make Remote Play look blocky even if download is fast. At home on the same network, your Wi-Fi matters more than your plan.

Two things help most:

• Wire the PS5 to the router with Ethernet so the console's side of the stream is stable.
• Put the playing device on 5 GHz Wi-Fi, close to the router. See 5 GHz vs 2.4 GHz.

Cloud streaming with PlayStation Plus Premium

Cloud streaming runs the game on Sony's servers and streams video to your PS5 or Portal, so you can play without downloading. Sony's minimums are 5 Mbps to start a session, 7 Mbps for 720p and 13 Mbps for 1080p. For the PS Portal, Sony lists the same three figures as upload and download speeds. The recommended figures climb to 52 Mbps for 4K.

The table shows each level. Treat the recommended figures as the real target. A connection that only just meets the minimum will drop resolution or stutter whenever anything else in the house uses bandwidth. If you share the line, add the needs of everyone else to these figures.

Downloads are where speed pays off

PS5 games and updates are often tens of gigabytes. Sony doesn't publish a recommended speed for downloads, but the time is simple arithmetic: gigabytes × 8,000 ÷ Mbps gives seconds at the full rate. A 50 GB game takes about 50 × 8,000 ÷ 100 = 4,000 seconds, roughly 67 minutes, on a 100 Mbps line, or about 22 minutes on 300 Mbps. Real downloads are often slower because PlayStation's servers and your Wi-Fi also set limits. If big downloads are routine, is 300 Mbps good explains what a faster tier buys you.

How to check your connection

On the PS5, go to Settings → Network → Connection Status → Test Internet Connection. It reports download and upload speed and your NAT type. NAT type affects whether you can join parties and some multiplayer sessions, separately from speed.

For a second opinion on a phone or laptop, run the SpeedMetric speed test next to the console. It shows download, upload, idle ping and jitter. It doesn't measure packet loss or ping while the line is busy, so if games lag only when someone else is downloading, read what bufferbloat is.