Providers like to sell you the top tier, and the adverts suggest 500 Mbps is essential for any modern home. In reality many households pay for speed they use only a fraction of, while others genuinely struggle because their plan is smaller than what they need at peak time.
The right question is not "how much does each device use?" but "what is running at the same time in the busiest hour?". That is what we will work out here.
Step one: what each activity needs
These are approximate figures based on what the platforms themselves recommend, with a small margin:
| Activity | Download | Upload |
|---|---|---|
| Browsing, messaging, email | 2–5 Mbps | 1 Mbps |
| Music (Spotify and similar) | Under 1 Mbps | — |
| 720p video | 3–5 Mbps | — |
| 1080p video | 5–8 Mbps | — |
| 4K video | 15–25 Mbps | — |
| HD video call | 3–4 Mbps | 3–4 Mbps |
| Online gaming (gameplay itself) | 1–5 Mbps | 1 Mbps |
| Live streaming at 1080p | — | 6–8 Mbps |
| Security camera uploading to the cloud | — | 1–4 Mbps per camera |
Notice that gaming itself needs very little speed. What it needs is low, steady ping. High speed only helps with downloading games and updates, which can run to 100 GB or more.
Step two: your home's peak hour
Think about the hour when the most people in your home are online, usually between 8 and 11 pm, and write down what is happening.
Example 1: two people
One person watches a series in 1080p, the other browses and watches short clips. Need: roughly 8 + 5 = 13 Mbps. A 30 Mbps plan is comfortable, and 50 Mbps leaves plenty of headroom for downloads.
Example 2: a family of five
A 4K TV in the living room (25), two people watching 1080p video on phones (16), a student in an online class (4 down, 4 up) and someone gaming (5). Total: about 50 Mbps down and 6 up. A 100 Mbps plan fits; a 50 Mbps plan will work on normal days and stumble whenever something extra downloads.
Example 3: working from home and making content
Someone who uploads videos to YouTube and has video meetings every day. Here upload is what matters: a 4 GB video file takes about 9 minutes at 60 Mbps upload and about 45 minutes at 12 Mbps. In this case a fibre plan with high upload is more important than a big download number.
Step three: add headroom, but do not overdo it
Add 30–50% on top of your calculated need, because Wi-Fi delivers less than the line and because updates and backups run in the background without you noticing. If you need 50 Mbps, a 75–100 Mbps plan is right.
Beyond that, extra speed helps with one thing: downloading large files. If you download huge games every week, the difference between 100 and 500 Mbps is noticeable (about two and a quarter hours versus about 27 minutes per 100 GB). If you do not, you will probably not feel the difference.
When a bigger plan is the wrong fix
- If the problem is Wi-Fi: a 500 Mbps plan on a router in the corner of the house will reach the bedroom just as slowly. Read our guide to router placement and bands first.
- If the problem is lag in games: this is usually bufferbloat, not a lack of speed. We explain it in our article on lag with a fast connection.
- If speed collapses only in the evening: that is congestion on the provider's network. A bigger plan with the same provider may suffer from the same congestion.