Ping Test
Ping measures how long it takes data to travel from your device to a server and back. Press GO to measure your latency right now.
Under 20 ms — Excellent
Ideal for competitive gaming and real-time applications. Essentially imperceptible latency.
20–50 ms — Good
Suitable for all gaming, HD video calls, and live collaboration tools.
50–100 ms — Acceptable
Fine for streaming, browsing, and casual gaming. Noticeable in fast-paced multiplayer games.
100+ ms — Poor
Lag in gaming, delay on calls. Investigate Wi-Fi, VPN, or ISP congestion as causes.
What is ping?
Ping — also called latency or round-trip time (RTT) — is the time in milliseconds for a packet to leave your device, reach a server, and return. It has nothing to do with download or upload speed; a very fast connection can still have high ping if the routing path is long or congested.
Every speed test on Speedtest.now measures ping by sending a series of HTTP requests to the nearest test server and recording each round-trip time. We report the median value to filter out single-sample spikes. See how it's measured →
Why ping matters
Gaming
Online games synchronise player positions in real time. High ping means the server receives your inputs late and you see opponents' actions late — producing the lag and rubber-banding effect. For competitive play, under 30 ms is the target. Most casual games are playable under 80 ms. See our Gaming Test page →
Video calls
Voice and video packets must arrive in order and on time. Above 150 ms both sides of a conversation experience noticeable echo-like delay. Above 300 ms conversations break down entirely. Full ping guide →
Browsing and streaming
These applications buffer content and are largely tolerant of high ping. Even 200 ms ping is unlikely to noticeably affect Netflix or web browsing under normal conditions.
What causes high ping?
- Physical distance to the server — data travels at roughly ⅔ the speed of light; distance imposes a physics floor
- Wi-Fi — radio channel contention adds 2–20 ms and increases jitter
- ISP congestion — peak-hour overloading causes packets to queue at routers
- VPN — adds routing and encryption overhead, often 10–40 ms extra
- Router overload — a busy consumer router adds processing delay to every packet
How to lower your ping
- Switch to wired Ethernet — the single most effective improvement for most users
- Connect to geographically closer game or app servers
- Reduce background traffic (streaming, downloads) that causes buffer bloat
- Restart your router to clear buffer queues
- Test at off-peak hours to isolate ISP congestion
Still slow? Read our full guide on why your internet is slow or check the ISP rankings to compare your provider.