What is a good ping? Latency ranges for every use

A good ping is under 50 ms. That's fast enough for almost everything, including most online games. Under 100 ms is fine for streaming, browsing and most video calls. As a rule of thumb, calls start to feel awkward past about 150 ms, and only fast games and cloud gaming really need much lower.

Ping, or latency, is the time it takes a small message to reach a server and come back, measured in milliseconds (ms). Lower is better. Unlike download speed, more isn't better here, and a fast plan doesn't guarantee a low ping.

Ping ranges by activity

The bands below are rules of thumb, except where a service publishes its own limit.

Activity	Comfortable	Starts to suffer	Published limit
Streaming video and music	under 100 ms	rarely matters	none published
Web browsing	under 100 ms	200 ms+ (pages feel sluggish)	none published
Video and voice calls	under 100 ms	about 150 ms	Ookla puts the conversation limit below 300 ms
Online console games	under 50 ms	about 100 ms	Xbox: under 150 ms
Competitive shooters	under 30 ms	about 60 ms	depends on the game
Cloud gaming	under 40 ms	about 60 ms	GeForce NOW: under 80 ms required

Published limits are minimums. Xbox's 150 ms means online play will work, not that it will feel sharp. For game-by-game detail, see what ping is good for gaming.

Why streaming barely cares about ping

Netflix, YouTube and Spotify download several seconds of content ahead of what you're watching or hearing. That buffer hides delay. A 150 ms ping adds a fraction of a second before playback starts, and then you never notice it again. What streaming needs is steady download speed.

Calls and games can't buffer ahead, because the next second hasn't happened yet. Every millisecond of delay shows up as people talking over each other or a shot landing late. That's why the same connection can stream 4K perfectly and still make calls feel laggy.

What a normal ping looks like on each connection type

Your type of connection sets a floor you can't get under. Providers' own published figures give a sense of scale:

• Fiber: Verizon reports measured latency of about 4–9 ms on its Fios tiers.
• 5G home internet: Verizon gives typical ranges of 35–55 ms or 50–70 ms, depending on the plan and spectrum.
• Satellite (Starlink): Starlink states 25–60 ms on land, and over 100 ms in some remote areas.

Cable and DSL usually land somewhere between fiber and 5G, though that's a rough rule, since few providers publish latency figures. If you're on Starlink or 5G and see 40 ms, that's normal for the technology, not a fault.

Jitter: the number next to ping

Jitter is how much your ping varies from one moment to the next. A steady 60 ms is often better for a call than a ping that bounces between 20 ms and 120 ms, because apps can adjust to a fixed delay but not to an unpredictable one. As a rule of thumb, jitter that's a small fraction of your ping is fine. Jitter that's as big as the ping itself points to Wi-Fi trouble or a busy line.

Jitter, packet loss and lag are related but different. The packet loss and lag guide separates them.

Why your ping looks different in different places

A speed test, a game and a call app can show three different pings, and all three can be right.

• Distance to the server. A speed test usually picks a nearby server. A game server may be hundreds of miles away. Every extra stretch of distance adds delay.
• How it's measured. The SpeedMetric test measures ping from your browser over the web, before the download starts. Browser timings include a little more overhead than the raw network ping a game reports, so expect them to read slightly higher.
• Idle or busy. SpeedMetric reports idle ping and jitter. It doesn't measure ping while your line is busy. Ping under load can be far higher if a download or upload is filling the line, a problem called bufferbloat.

How to get a lower ping

Start with the fixes that cost nothing:

1. Use Ethernet for the device that matters. Wi-Fi adds delay and most of the jitter in a typical home.
2. Stop big transfers while you play or call: cloud backups, game updates, large uploads. A full upload hurts ping more than a full download. The guide to a good upload speed shows how quickly cameras and backups use it up.
3. Turn off your VPN or pick a closer server. A VPN routes your traffic through an extra hop. The guide to VPN slowdowns covers how to test the difference.
4. Choose the nearest game or app region when the app lets you.
5. Restart the router if ping has crept up over days. This is a quick fix, not a cure.

If your wired idle ping is still well over 100 ms on cable or fiber, run a few tests at different times of day and send the results to your provider. That's outside the normal range for those connections.