(Credit: Jeffrey Hazelwood/PCMag; Starlink/Shutterstock)
I review the latest laptops and write about cutting-edge AI tools, but I'm based in Idaho, in farm country. My ground-based internet options are pitiful, and my daily work demands high speeds, low latency, and rock-solid reliability. So I've been using Starlink satellite internet for years now. I'm also PCMag's main Starlink tester and reviewer, but it isn't just a part of my career; it's essential to my even having a career in my current location. Throw in a family that streams a lot of media, kids who want to game online, and my own highly connected interests, and Starlink has been pivotal in keeping my whole family online.
Since 2022—a little over a year after public signups opened for SpaceX's satellite internet service—I've been testing and reviewing Starlink service and equipment, including the current residential dish and the portable Starlink Mini. I've watched the connection quality improve over the years, and turned my initial testing and review into a long-term survey of real-world performance. Starlink has transformed from good enough to fantastic, earning multiple Editors’ Choice awards and approaching a long-awaited IPO.
In my fifth year of testing Starlink, the nature of the service is fundamentally changing. SpaceX is no longer just chasing raw speed or connection consistency; instead, the service is forcing users to navigate a new reality of network congestion, priority tiers, and a shifting value proposition. My latest 2026 data shows that while upload speeds and latency have cleared impressive new performance milestones, download speeds may be hitting a ceiling as the network matures.
Expanding Service Options: New Plans, Pricing Tiers, and Market Promotions
When I started testing Starlink, I got the Starlink Dish V2 (also called Dishy McDishface), which I tested in 2023 and early 2024. Later in 2024, Starlink introduced the Starlink Dish V4, the replacement and upgrade of the V2 hardware I started with.
The new dish and accompanying router have a better design, weatherproofing, faster Wi-Fi 6, and better wireless range. So I tested it all again, and have continued to watch how the service and hardware have evolved.
In 2025, the Starlink Mini arrived. This portable dish with a built-in router is designed for road trips and nomadic use on Starlink Roam, the travel-friendly mobile version of the satellite internet service.
But new hardware has hardly been the extent of the changes coming to Starlink. In fact, in the last year, we've seen a lot of expansion in what service Starlink offers and what prices it charges (check out my guide to Starlink Pricing and Plans for more details), and a number of aggressive promotional discounts to encourage new subscribers. Even the equipment packages have shifted a bit, offering more budget-friendly plans and hardware.
Starlink Performance Over Time: From Early Promise to Mature Network
As I've tested Starlink year after year, I've seen a clear trend in its evolution: It isn't just getting faster, it's becoming more stable and more reliable. What was originally just Starlink's one consumer internet plan has since been renamed Residential Max, the highest tier among numerous new plans for home internet. (Regardless of what it's called, I'm continuing to use this plan for my Starlink home internet testing.)
Over the years, I've seen the network move from just a notch above proof-of-concept to today's connect-anywhere-on-the-globe experience:
- 2022: In my first year of testing, I established a baseline of service speed and quality. Starlink was arguably still a SpaceX experiment. But, as my original review makes clear, I already recognized it as a game-changer. Download speeds averaged 89Mbps, uploads struggled to exceed 20Mbps, and latency averaged 60ms. That's poor by today's standards, but it's incredibly fast compared with any other competing option at the time.
- 2023: My second year of testing marked a leap in efficiency and speed. Download speeds climbed to 130Mbps—a nearly 46% increase—while upload speeds increased to 15Mbps, and latency began a downward trend, dropping to 50ms as the satellite constellation grew.
- 2024: I tested Starlink twice this year, first using the Dish V2 hardware, and again when the new Dish V4 became available for purchase. With the Dish V2, I saw download speeds drop slightly to an average of 113Mbps, suggesting the V2 was reaching its technical ceiling. Upon testing the new Dish V4, I saw average download speeds jump to 150Mbps (peaking at 325Mbps), and latency drop below 30ms.
- 2025: Performance reached new heights, proving the network's continued maturity. Mean download speeds climbed to 177Mbps, with a peak speed of 315Mbps, and low speeds consistently stayed above 50Mbps (a far cry from the 5Mbps lows of 2022). Upload speeds approached 30Mbps on average, and latency dropped another 62%, averaging 22.36ms.
As you can see, steady improvement has been the hallmark of Starlink since I've been testing the service. Improvements to the residential hardware, orbital infrastructure, and terrestrial network gateways all combine to improve every part of the Starlink experience year after year.
2026 Starlink Performance: Strong Consistency, Slower Gains at the Top End
My latest download speed test results are organized into three groups: High for the fastest download speed measured over a 24-hour period, Low for the lowest speed recorded on that day of testing, and Mean, averaged across the entire day's results. With dozens of tests run throughout each day of testing, this is the simplest way to see the overall picture of day-to-day performance.
And that picture isn't as exciting as it used to be. While the top speeds hit 265Mbps during my testing period—higher than the 100Mbps or 200Mbps you'd likely get from the cheaper residential plans—it's nowhere near the 400Mbps that Starlink is currently touting as typical for the highest-tier plan I'm using for testing.
The disappointments continue: Daily averages are in the 145-Mbps-to-170Mbps range. That's not only slower than what the 200Mbps residential plan promises, but it's slower than the averages I saw when I tested that 200Mbps plan. Speed issues aside, comparing the high and low for each day does show some volatility, likely caused by network use during peak hours, but the fact that mean speeds stayed so consistent shows that Starlink doesn't feel volatile day to day.
That said, I did see real improvement in low-speed data, with only one result dipping below 50Mbps—and it was 49.93Mbps. That's slightly better than I saw last year (when lows bottomed out at 42.61Mbps), and it's a huge improvement over the 5Mbps low speeds I saw in 2022, my first year of testing. It also means that even at its slowest, Starlink handily outperforms the DSL connections that many rural users have as their only non-satellite internet option.
Download consistency is the next parameter I test. The majority of test results land between 130Mbps and 220Mbps. That means relatively consistent service, since it's not showing frequent slowdowns. But the most common results range is 200Mbps to 210Mbps, which is only about half of the 400Mbps Starlink is currently advertising for the Residential Max plan.
Upload speed improvement is much better. I not only see a tighter clustering of results between 20Mbps and 80Mbps, but also higher averages. Where most upload tests fell below 40Mbps in 2025, this year I saw speeds climb dramatically higher, marking a noticeable improvement in the service.
Next up: Tracking the ping results to measure latency. I have more than 18,000 measurements over the 13-day testing period. More than 67% fell below 20 milliseconds (ms), and 96% fell below 30ms. That's incredible consistency, and compliments speeds that are more than fast enough for real-time video conferencing, online gaming, and even high-frequency trading.
The lower and upper ranges are also interesting here, because only a handful of high-latency events were recorded in nearly two full weeks of active monitoring. Given that these latency spikes are most often caused by momentary network congestion, this suggests a remarkably stable level of service.
However, there were also zero results in the 0-10ms range, which is typically where fiber-optic, land-based internet falls. Since we're talking about satellite internet, the distance between the Earth-bound dish and the low Earth orbit satellites is the bottleneck limiting latency from going lower. Wireless transmission speeds already travel through the vacuum of space and the atmosphere at the speed of light. With Starlink LEO satellites sitting about 340 miles above the closest dish, that accounts for about 7ms to 10ms of travel time. You won't get anything faster than that. But even with real physical constraints of how low latency can go, the engineers at Starlink have whittled it down even further from the already-impressive results I saw last year.
When I break down latency by server, separating Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and Google (8.8.8.8) results, I see nearly identical performance profiles regardless of which endpoint I measure against. Between the two, the difference in average latency was 0.05ms, which is imperceptible to most humans using the internet.
Given that Cloudflare and Google are the biggest players in the global internet backbone, Starlink offers top-notch performance that's clearly optimized for the most common DNS providers. If anything, the uniformness in latency distributions suggests that any slowness isn't due to Starlink, Cloudflare, or Google, but to the local infrastructure in between. Some of that will be down to the physics of beaming data back and forth between satellites and the dish, but another likely source is the on-the-ground infrastructure at Starlink gateways, the terrestrial ground stations where Starlink satellite signals connect to the greater internet.
The Implications of Continued Improvement
I've made a few comments so far about the performance differences between 2025 and today, but it's easier to see them compared side by side:
Year-over-year download speeds didn't increase this time, but the growth rate since I started testing is still positive. I've seen download speeds increase by 78.6%, from 89Mbps to 160Mbps, since I started testing. The biggest jump was in 2024, when the Dish V4 launched, but that hardware upgrade accounted for only some of the improvement. Clearly, SpaceX is continuing its push for better and faster performance from the entire chain, from satellites to terrestrial stations.
The camel hump distribution of speeds, with a new peak and then a slight decline, seen with both the Dish V2 and Dish V4, may suggest that the hardware is reaching its technical limitations, or that the growing subscriber base is causing more congestion. In either case, I wouldn't be surprised to see a hardware update in the next year or two to address the issue and maintain steady improvements, and in fact, rumors suggest an update is coming.
(Credit: Brian Westover)The steady increase in average upload speed bolsters this conclusion. Based on my test numbers, upload speeds jumped 43% this year, which is a pretty incredible technical feat. In fact, upload speeds have nearly quadrupled since the start of my long-term testing. Whether it's down to infrastructure improvements or a change in how Starlink handles data transmission, it's gotten markedly better year after year.
Latency averages complete the picture of Starlink's evolution, showing another clear trendline of fairly dramatic improvement. This year's average of 21.5ms is the lowest I've seen in my annual testing, improving even on last year's 22.4ms average.
But the long-term data tells the real story. In 2022, latency was 60 milliseconds. At the time, that wasn't just acceptable, it was cutting-edge! Other satellite ISPs had latencies of 600ms or greater. So, even from the start, Starlink was snappy enough for most uses. In actual use, it was more than quick enough for work and even some play.
But in subsequent tests, I've seen latency improve from good enough for slow-paced games to on par with some broadband connections. For me, it's gone from adequate enough for low-res Zoom calls to fast enough for lag-free high-resolution conversations. It all suggests a steadily improving, maturing network that gets better as technology is refined and maintains those gains even as the active user base grows exponentially.
The 2026 Value Question: Speed vs. Priority in a Tiered System
As we approach Starlink's June IPO, SpaceX has been making several big changes to Starlink. For years, it had a one-size-fits-all model: You paid a flat monthly fee ($120) and got whatever the satellites overhead could provide. Today, the introduction of the Residential Max ($130), Residential 200 ($85), and Residential 100 ($55) tiers has opened Starlink to more households, offering budget-friendly options that tailor service levels to your needs.
And that all makes the value proposition of Starlink a more complicated question than in years past. Prices for the top tier have gone up, but more affordable options are also available, and nearly all of them offer better latency and speeds than DSL, the alternative in most rural communities. In many cases, Starlink is undercutting DSL providers on price while still delivering double the speed.
(Credit: Brian Westover)But my test results also show that there's a bit of a gap between what's advertised and what you actually get for the money. On paper, the Residential Max plan I’m testing promises speeds of up to 400Mbps. In reality, as my data shows, I am seeing 145Mbps to 170Mbps.
Then there's the question of what exactly that extra $45 per month for the Max tier is buying you. My testing suggests it's not purely about download speeds. Significant improvements in upload speeds and latency show continued progress for the service, but if average speeds are staying below 200Mbps even on the top-tier plan, the value isn't found in raw megabits; it's found in service priority.
As Starlink's aggressive growth leads to more network congestion, having that consistency during peak usage hours may be a perk worth paying for. If my neighbor is on Starlink's least expensive Residential 100 plan, they could see download speeds drop during high use, while mine stays steady. You aren't just paying for speed anymore; you’re paying to stay at the front of the line when the local ground station gets crowded.
Starlink's Competitive Future: IPO Pressure and New Rivals on the Horizon
Starlink is no longer the scrappy, experimental wing of SpaceX; it is the company’s primary revenue engine, and may be shifting its entire identity to that of a utility. The SpaceX S-1 filing made public on May 20 shows that Starlink now accounts for more than 60% of the company’s total revenue.
For users, this means more stability and better support, but it also carries the risk of shareholders demanding a greater focus on profits, pushing for additional segmentation in plans or stricter data deprioritization for the lower tiers. Starlink Mobile, the company's direct-to-cell system, is also gaining traction, which could open new avenues for growth—and more competition for limited bandwidth.
(Credit: Brian Westover)Then there's the competition. While a few attempts to compete with Starlink's LEO technology have materialized, the biggest potential player is Amazon's Leo (formerly known as Kuiper). By this time next year, I expect to be running side-by-side tests between the two. We'll see how the new service does once it's up and running.
For now, I'm still happy to recommend Starlink to anyone who doesn't have access to cable or fiber. It's an especially smart choice in areas where there is no local option or where DSL would severely limit your connectivity. In those instances, Starlink delivers what other ISPs can't: a high-quality connection at a reasonable price.
But my advice now comes with an asterisk. The best deal may not be the top-flight Residential Max. If stability and better-than-DSL speeds are all you're after, the lower-tier Residential 100 or 200 plans might offer better value.