The Best Gaming ISPs for Canada 2020

High-speed internet is an important aspect of home computing as a whole—we wouldn't be streaming 4K Netflix shows without it. But when it comes to gaming, a high-quality connection is far more important. For gamers in Canada, that means looking for the broadband provider with the least amount of jitter and latency on the line. The less of that there is, the better the quality of the connection.

That's what this story is all about: high-quality ISP connections, the kind a serious gamer needs to deliver the ultimate frag before they're kicked off the map. The number we use to determine that—the PCMag Gaming Quality Index—is created by adding up the scores recorded for latency and jitter via every test made on the PCMag Speed Test.

Curious about your broadband internet speed? Test it now!

You can read the full methodology of how we determine this over in our feature on the Best Gaming ISPs for the US. The lower the number, the better.

That's the opposite of our PCMag Speed Index, where the higher the number the better. As you'll see below, just because an ISP has the fastest speed doesn't mean it has the highest quality or vice versa.

All data used was gathered in tests made from Dec. 1, 2018 to Dec. 6, 2019. We received 37,245 tests from Canada, taken from a total of 332,143 tests worldwide.

This is also the first time we're splitting the gaming ISPs into two groups, as we did for the Fastest ISPs of 2019: Canada story. For a Canadian ISP to be listed below as a "major" ISP it had to have a customer base of over 500,000, service in multiple provinces, and have over 1,000 tests in our results. For the "all" ISPs table, we looked at any and all ISPs in the country that had at least 100 tests.

Canada's Best Gaming ISPs 2020

There was a time when Montreal-based Cogeco spent a couple of years at the top of this list, with Gaming Quality Index numbers that couldn't be beat. However, last year the cable provider fell behind despite still improving its quality score. The same holds true now, as we crown a new winner and welcome another old winner.

Among the Major ISPs, we only have six listed that met our criteria. The winner by a hair is Telus. Its Gaming Quality Index score of 22.1 is only a tenth ahead of Shaw Communications at 22.2, both obviously striving for quality with major improvements over last year. Alberta-based Shaw was at No. 2 last year as well, but with a 31.7; British Columbia-based Telus's improvement from 37.5 is a major achievement in quality.

Take a look at the Speed Index tab in the interactive table above and you'll see that the speed doesn't always correlate to the quality. Rogers is technically the "fastest" ISP among the majors amid all the same tests.

However, there are more than the major ISPs out there. There are small and local and municipality providers, which traditionally offer internet connection class that the big companies can only dream of. However, this year in Canada, for the most part, you'll see the same major providers in this list—they've got Gaming Quality Index scores that are that good.

There's one exception: Virgin Mobile is once again the true highest-quality ISP in all of Canada.

This is the same spot Virgin Mobile occupied last year in our results, staying ahead of the quality score for the majors and all the minors. It did so then with a 27.9; this year it cut that by almost a third down to 18.4. Virgin Mobile's fixed broadband (that's a fancy way of saying it has wires going to homes) may not be everywhere, but if you're big into gaming, maybe you should move to one of its service areas. This number is now the record highest Gaming Quality Index score we've ever seen out of our test from Canada.

Best Gaming ISPs by Province, City

It may not help you pick an ISP, but knowing the locations in Canada with the best Gaming Quality Score might assist you in picking a new home for better gaming. Don't be surprised to see the central-to-western-most provinces listed below with the best quality scores—that's where the high-quality ISPs like Telus and Shaw have their highest concentration of users. Saskatchewan is the outlier, but even that doesn't have a terrible quality rating.

A quick click on the Speed Index will also show again how throughput and latency don't always correlate—the province with the fastest speeds are Newfoundland and Labrador.

If you're wondering about specific cities and towns to get the best scores, our tests indicate the following five cities as your best bet specifically (each city had at least 100 tests across all of its available ISPs): Levis, QB (9.0); Hawkesbury, ON (9.4); L'Orignal, ON (12.9); Thetford-Mines, QB (14.5), and Rimouski, QB (14.7).

Don't forget: Test your internet connection right now and you'll be part of future Fastest ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs stories.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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