Is your internet plan actually right for you? · StabilityPulseSkip to content← StabilityPulse<br>Your current planOptional<br>Skip this section if you're shopping for a new plan. Fill it in to see how much you might be overpaying.<br>Download (Mbps)<br>Upload (Mbps)<br>Monthly $
Household size<br>How many people use the connection. Affects concurrent-use math.<br>People
What happens on your connection<br>For each activity, how many people in the household do this at the same time in a typical hour.<br>Streaming<br>HD video streaming (1080p)<br>Netflix, YouTube, Prime at 1080p. Per FCC chart: 3–8 Mbps.
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4K video streaming<br>Netflix UHD, YouTube 4K. Netflix's own minimum is 15 Mbps; 25 is realistic with overhead.
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Music streaming<br>Spotify, Apple Music, even lossless. Negligible.
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Calls & gaming<br>Video call (Zoom / Teams / Meet)<br>1080p group call. Zoom 3.0 Mbps, Teams ~2 Mbps, Meet 2.6 Mbps minimum per vendor docs.
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Online gaming (active session)<br>Active multiplayer. Latency matters far more than bandwidth — gaming is rarely throughput-bound.
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Cloud gaming 1080p (GeForce Now / Xbox Cloud)<br>Vendor recommendation: 25 Mbps down for 1080p60. Latency-sensitive — wired strongly preferred.
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Cloud gaming 4K<br>GeForce Now Ultimate / Xbox Cloud 4K. ~45 Mbps sustained, very latency-sensitive.
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Live streaming (Twitch / YouTube)<br>1080p60 broadcast. Upload is the bottleneck — symmetric fiber matters more than raw download.
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Other<br>Browsing / email / social<br>Includes web pages, email, social media, and casual SD video.
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Active game / app download<br>Saturates the link briefly. Counts once if you frequently download large games (PS5 / Steam / Xbox).
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Cloud security camera (per cam, 1080p)<br>Each 1080p cam uploads continuously. 5 cams = 20 Mbps sustained upload.
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Smart home / IoT (aggregate)<br>Thermostats, lights, plugs, voice assistants. Aggregate household impact is negligible.
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What's available at your address<br>Determines whether symmetric upload (fiber) is even an option.<br>Connection typeFiber availableCable onlyDSL onlyFixed wireless / 5G homeDon't know
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You probably need<br>Up to 25 Mbps (DSL territory)<br>25–75 Mbps down · 5–55 Mbps up<br>⚠ No activities selected. The recommendation is the modern floor (25 Mbps) — pick at least one activity for a meaningful answer.<br>Now check whether your line is stable enough for calls →Throughput is half the picture. Jitter, packet loss, and loaded latency are the other half.
First, the units<br>ISPs sell internet in megabits per second , written Mbps. Eight bits make a byte, so 100 Mbps gets you a download ceiling of about 12.5 megabytes per second — written MB/s. A gigabit connection (1,000 Mbps) tops out around 125 MB/s. The difference matters when you see a "10 MB/s" download in your browser and wonder why your 200 Mbps plan looks so slow. It isn't. 10 MB/s is exactly what 80 Mbps of usable throughput looks like, and most single-source downloads never reach the full link rate anyway.<br>The other unit users mix up is gigabit (Gb) versus gigabyte (GB). A 1 Gbps line is 1 gigabit per second of bandwidth. A 12 GB game download moves 12 gigabytes — about 96 gigabits total. At line rate that takes roughly 96 seconds in theory; in practice, far longer, because the game server hands you bits more slowly than your ISP can deliver them.
What each activity actually costs<br>These are the per-stream bandwidth requirements published by the vendors themselves, the FCC broadband guide, and the methodology audit in the StabilityPulse about page. Each row is one concurrent instance — one person doing the thing — not a household total.<br>HD video streaming (1080p): 5–8 Mbps down. Netflix, YouTube, Prime.<br>4K video streaming: 15–25 Mbps down. Netflix UHD asks for 15 minimum; in practice you want 25 to absorb bitrate spikes.<br>Video calls (Zoom, Teams, Meet): 3 Mbps each way for 1080p group calls. Meet's official minimum is 2.6 Mbps before it falls back to lower resolution.<br>Online gaming: 1–10 Mbps each way during active play. Gaming is almost never throughput-bound — latency is what matters, and that lives in the stability layer, not the speed tier.<br>Cloud gaming (GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud): 25 Mbps down for 1080p60, 45 Mbps for 4K. Wired connection strongly preferred; cloud gaming over Wi-Fi is fragile.<br>Live streaming (Twitch, YouTube 1080p60): 3 Mbps down, 8 Mbps up. Upload is the constraint.<br>Cloud security cameras (per cam, 1080p): 2 Mbps down, 4 Mbps up, continuous. Five cameras add 20 Mbps to your upload need without anyone watching.<br>Active game or app download: saturates the link briefly — typically 100+ Mbps if the source server can deliver it. This is the only activity where a higher tier directly buys you time.<br>Browsing, email, social, music: negligible. A few Mbps each, peaky and short.
The household math, worked out<br>Real households don't do one thing at a time. The trick is estimating concurrent peak — the worst minute of a normal day, not the worst minute imaginable.<br>Solo remote...