How to Check Your Internet Speed

(Credit: René Ramos)

Is your ISP delivering the data speeds you were promised? Is there even a way to find out? Should you just take their word for it? The answer to these questions, respectively, are "we'll see," "Yep!," and "HELL NO!" We can say that because you have access to free tools that will clock your own personal connection.

Most ISPs offer a speed test, usually a variation of something you'll see below. Skip it. If the test is from your own ISP, you can't know for sure that the connection between you and the ISP servers won't be optimized for better speeds. Stick with a third-party test tool.

Before you run any of these tests, be sure to:

Turn off any downloads or uploads you have going on your system. That includes streaming media or live video meetings or torrents. Rebooting the system is a good start.
Log out of your VPN software for the duration of the test; it adds a lot of overhead to the connection.
For real accuracy, plug your PC directly into the router via Ethernet. You'll have a lot less network overhead than you would with a Wi-Fi connection.
Skip testing at peak hours, like in the evening when everyone is at home streaming music or movies.

Run the tests multiple times. The conditions on your internet connection can be very different at different times of day. The more data you have, the better for checking to make sure you get what you pay for.

PCMag Speed Test

We have a PCMag Speed Test, which you can use at any time, even on a mobile device. We use the data it gathers to determine the Best ISPs in the US and Canada, as well as the Best Gaming ISPs. Click it below to give it a try and see your download and upload speed, plus your latency (the time in milliseconds it takes for packets to travel from you to the server).

Ookla Speedtest

Ookla Speedtest measures the time it takes for data to transfer between your computer and a remote server by way of your local ISP connection. It determines your location and pairs you with a local Speedtest server. All you have to do is click the "Go" button. The whole process should take less than a minute to complete, and you watch it unfold in real-time. Run the test a few times by clicking the "Go" button again and again—you will see fluctuations in the data speed from test to test, depending on the network congestion at any given time.

The real benefit in using Speedtest.net comes with creating an account. With that, you can change settings, like picking a server for testing, and make it permanent so it's saved for every visit. You can view your entire test history to see how your internet connection changes over time. To put those numbers in context, click the "Results" link to compare your results to global average speeds. If you used more than one connection (say you went from a hotspot to home and ran tests in both locations on the same PC), or used more than one connection server, click "Filter Results" to narrow down which tests/servers you want to see.

Use the Speedtest mobile apps to test on your smartphone (iOS, Android). It includes an integrated VPN option that costs $4.99 per month, which gets rid of the ads. You can go ad-free without the VPN for $0.99. Speedtest also has native apps for Windows, Mac, Google Chrome browser, even the Apple TV.

To compare your speeds with the rest of the world, go to the Speedtest Global Index, which offers average throughput for mobile and fixed broadband connections across the globe. Many ISPs run a version of Speedtest on their own servers for testing customer connections. Those tests become part of Speedtest's overall dataset, which is used to create the Global Index.

TestMy.net

TestMy.net tries to stand out from the competition by not tying its real-world broadband tests to any particular ISPs. The results are also always based on completed tests performed start to finish, not estimates, which it says other tests do regularly. It has servers in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

It's all browser-based using HTML5 so the same test works on mobile browsers as well as desktops—there are no separate apps for iOS or Android. The site does have ads full of ad-traps however—lots of "Start" buttons intended to trick you into clicking the commercial rather than the speed test itself. Be careful.

You can run a download-only test, upload-only test, or latency. There's an option to sign up for an account to get results emailed to you directly. You can even use the Automatic Speed Test option to have it regularly check bandwidth in the background, then come back later to get the results.

Fast

Netflix has a vested interest in making sure the internet used by its customers is lightning fast. So it has its very own speed test. Visit Fast.com and you don't even have to click a button. It starts an immediate download speed test. You can click for more results, get latency and upload test results, and share data on Facebook or X instantly. With Fast.com, however, you can't pick the server you test against. There is also a Fast Speed Test app for iOS and Android.

Speedof.Me

Speedof.Me has a zippy little test that works on mobile devices and the desktop—it was one of the first HTML5-based speed tests to come along as Flash and Silverlight stopped being supported by major browsers. It offers a history if you run multiple tests, and provides an "instant look" graph as the test runs multiple passes for download and upload. It has 100+ servers in North America, Europe, Asia, South America, and a couple in Australia—it picks the fastest (vs. the closest) one for you.

Search Engines

Go to your search engine of choice—if those choices are Google or Bing—and search the term "speed test." Both will pop up a test in the top of the search results.

Bing's test looks like Ookla's Speed Test, because that's exactly what powers it. It provides quick latency, download, and upload results. You can't track multiple tests or pick a server.

Google's test is run by Measurement Lab (M-Lab). The results are the usual download and upload speed plus latency, with no tracking or adjustment to settings. M-Lab also powers the speed tests hosted by sites like HighSpeedInternet and Broadbandnow.

There are plenty of other tests you can try, like Fireprobe, SpeedSmart, SpeedCheck, and Ubiquiti's WiFiman. The FCC also offers some tests, but only in the form of mobile apps. If you have a favorite, let us know in the comments.

Disclosure: Ookla is owned by PCMag's parent company, Ziff Davis.

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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