Gigabit Internet: Is Faster Internet Plan Always Better?

This might come as a surprise, but faster speeds aren’t always better. While speed is important, you probably don’t need the 1,000Mbps speed your internet provider is advertising as “the best deal” unless you have a house chock full of heavy internet users and bandwidth-hogging devices. Plus, gigabit plans are usually on the more expensive side of home internet. Let’s take a closer look at how to determine if gigabit internet is worth the price.

What is gigabit internet?

Let’s start at the beginning: Digital information is measured in bits, and a megabit is 1,000,000 bits. Your internet speeds are measured in bits per second or, more commonly today, megabits per second. That unit measures how much data is processed over a network in a second. 1,000Mbps is equal to 1 gigabit per second, or Gbps.

The more megabits or gigabits per second your internet connection can accommodate, the better performance you can expect when streaming video or playing online games without lag or glitches, at least up to a point. You can still experience interruptions with a gigabit plan depending on a number of factors like your Wi-Fi setup, the layout of your home and the number of heavy internet users in the house. But we’ll get into that later.

How much speed do you really need?

To evaluate whether or not you need a gigabit tier, first consider how much speed your household consumes each month. Do you notice a lot of lag, buffering and interruption? If you’ve already rundown the list of slow Wi-Fi solutions and found your speeds still lacking, you might need to upgrade. But sometimes the fix can be a small one, like moving your router to a central, raised location in the house. If you have a plan with a data cap, are you hitting your limit early in the month? Most ISPs offer apps that allow you to monitor your data usage, regardless of whether you have a data cap. If you’re using a lot of data month over month and noticing slowdowns, you could potentially use a speed upgrade.

Next, take stock of how many smart devices and internet users are in your household. You can consult our internet speed guide and the FCC’s household broadband guide for more in-depth tips on evaluating how much speed you’ll need, but the recommendation for the heaviest internet usage (like streaming in high-quality video, using Zoom, or downloading files) requires only 25Mbps per action. A good rule of thumb is that if you have more than four heavy internet users in the house at a time (think gamers, streamers, remote workers or students), an upgrade to a gigabit tier could make sense. Otherwise, you’ll be paying for speeds you won’t use.

Cable versus fiber gigabit internet

Two types of internet connections can legitimately deliver consistent gigabit-speed internet: cable and fiber. Moreover, fiber internet is the broadband gold standard since it offers lightning-fast connections and symmetrical download and upload speeds, giving you the fastest internet possible. It’s more reliable than cable and less prone to being affected by peak usage times or congestion.

Cable internet provides connection through the same coaxial cables providers use for TV services, so it’s frequently bundled with TV packages. It’s more reliable than satellite internet and offers faster download speeds, too. But unlike fiber, cable internet’s upload speeds are significantly slower than its download speeds. So, if you’re sending emails or video chatting, you might experience some delay.

Which providers offer gigabit internet?

Most national internet service providers offer gigabit plans. There’s a mix of fiber and cable providers that can offer speeds up to a gigabit, with most fiber providers, like AT&T and Google Fiber, offering speeds up to a gigabit and much faster. Unfortunately, fiber internet access is still pretty limited, with an overall 46% availability, according to the latest data from the Federal Communications Commission. Spectrum, Astound Broadband and others offer gigabit plans over cable connections and are much more widely available than fiber providers. Notably, although Verizon 5G claims to offer speeds up to 1,000Mbps, only a select lucky handful of customers will see those speeds. Besides Starry, Verizon 5G Home Internet is the only other major 5G home internet provider to offer gigabit speeds.

Although it’s possible we’ll see multi-gigabit speeds from Starlink in the future, satellite ISPs and DSL internet providers do not offer gigabit speeds. Here are some of the major ISPs in the country that offer gigabit speeds.

Source: CNET analysis of provider data.

A gigabit plan typically costs between $60 and $80 per month with the average cost of the most broadly available plans compiled above coming to $65 monthly. Multi-gigabit plans can run between $70 to $100 or more monthly. For instance, Xfinity and Ziply Fiber offer 10 gig plans for $300 per month, and Google Fiber offers an 8 gig plan that costs $150 monthly.

Generally, faster plans offer the lowest price per Mbps, a metric we often use to decipher whether an internet plan is cost-efficient. For instance, the cost per Mbps for Xfinity’s $300 per month 10 gig plan is just 3 cents. Meanwhile, Xfinity’s much more widely-used 300Mbps plan costs $35 monthly, which comes out to 12 cents per Mbps. That doesn’t mean paying $300 monthly for 10,000Mbps is the better deal in this scenario. Unless you’re operating a business that needs that kind of speed, you’ll be better off with a slower plan.

Xfinity spokesperson Joel Shadle told CNET there’s more to value than speed: “While it’s important to get enough speed, maybe even more, value extends beyond that. Reliability is almost more important than speed in an internet plan.”

Why do I not have the exact speeds promised on a gigabit plan?

Verizon Fios, Verizon’s fiber internet brand, offers a 1 gig plan for $90 per month but notes — in the small print underneath — that it maxes out at 940Mbps for downloads and 880Mbps for uploads. AT&T’s 5 gig plan features speeds up to 4.7Gbps. This is common for ISPs, as many “gigabit” plans, especially ones that run on a cable connection, actually offer speeds lower than 1,000Mbps. So what gives?

It’s complicated, but it boils down to the fact that networking protocols and equipment consume a lot of that bandwidth. Think of it as networking overhead. And the specific equipment, like a modem or router, that connects the internet to your laptop or phone also determines the speed you’ll get. For example, California-based provider Sonic Internet advertises speeds up to 10,000Mbps for just $50 monthly. But unless you have a compatible Wi-Fi 7 router, you won’t get those speeds.

Plus, if you connect to your router wirelessly via Wi-Fi, your speeds will almost always be slower than they would otherwise be with a wired Ethernet connection. This is why providers often list speeds “up to” a certain threshold. For most of us, the difference between one gig and 940Mbps should be imperceptible. Check out our top picks for the best routers.

Given this, when CNET reviews ISPs, we may refer to ISP plan names but use exact numbers when listing connection speeds. If a “gigabit” plan promises speeds only up to 940Mbps, we take that into account in our analyses and make it clear in our descriptions.

Learn more about how we test ISPs.

Is gigabit internet worth the cost?

Some gigabit internet plans are quite pricey, sometimes costing hundreds of dollars per month. And there’s no point in paying for extra speed you don’t need or can’t use due to network hardware or other limitations. If you’re an internet power user who processes large video files or plays cutting-edge online games, a gigabit plan might be worth the cost, but only if other internet users are in the house with you. For most households, less than a gig of speed should suffice and save you hundreds of dollars per year. According to the latest data from OpenVault, the average household only uses around 564Mbps in download speeds a month.

Guidelines from the FCC state that a connection delivering between 100 and 500Mbps is enough for one to two people to run videoconferencing, streaming and online gaming applications simultaneously. Many providers offer 300Mbps plans starting around $50 per month, though sometimes even lower. Plans that deliver between 500 and 1,000Mbps, which typically cost between $70 and $100 per month, will allow three or more people to use videoconferencing, streaming and online gaming simultaneously. These are only guidelines and internet speed, service and performance will vary — sometimes dramatically — depending on connection type, equipment, provider and address. Only the most hardcore users have a rationale for paying for anything over a gig of speed.

“Most people don’t really need it,” says CNET writer and resident internet service expert Joe Supan. He points out that symmetrical download and upload speeds might be a reason to pay for a fiber connection, since having a higher upload speed will translate to less performance lag when sharing large files. “If you do have multiple people working from home, having a higher upload speed might be worth going up to that gig tier,” he says. That noted, you can get symmetrical speeds from any fiber connection and without upgrading to gig speed.

Gigabit internet FAQ