Top Best Wi-Fi Speed
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Best Apps to Check Wi-Fi Speed

People often ask, “I want to test my Internet speed but which Wi-Fi speed test app should I choose?” The answer is simple: choose the app that best meets your needs.

As you’ll see, some Wi-Fi speed test apps are extremely simple and designed to do just one thing, while others are more complex. If you’re a home user, you probably don’t want to spend long hours learning how to use a professional application that offers 100x as many features as you actually need. Instead, you should pick something that’s easy to use and comes with an intuitive graphical user interface.

Simplicity has its merits when you only need to check what your current Wi-Fi speed is, but extra features come in handy when you decide to do something about it. Always select a wireless speed test app that supports the latest Wi-Fi standards and the most commonly used Wi-Fi frequency ranges. What may be even more important than features, though, is accuracy.

The last thing you want to do is accuse your ISP of not living up to its promises only to find out that the Wi-Fi speed test app you’ve been using is inaccurate. There are many wireless speed test apps out there, but only a handful are mature, polished products that are ready for daily use. We recommend you to choose a wireless speed test app from a professional developer that knows how to develop world-class software and always stands behind its customers.

We’ve selected the top 7 best Wi-Fi speed test apps that you can use to instantly check Wi-Fi speed and picked our favorite.

How Do Wi-Fi Speed Test Apps Work?

Virtually all Wi-Fi speed test apps test the following components: latency, upload speed, and download speed. From the point of view of regular Internet user, download speed is the most important measurement as it dictates how fast websites load and how long it takes for websites to load, but latency and upload speed are also critical for having an enjoyable web browsing experience.

What Is Latency?

In computer networking, latency is the time it takes data packets travel from their point of origin to their destination. Let’s say you want to download a file from a remote server. You already have the download link, so you simply paste it into your web browser and press Enter.

Depending on your Internet connection, it may take anywhere from several milliseconds to several seconds for the download to begin because it takes a certain time for the server to fulfill the download request. The time it takes for the reply to arrive is latency, and Wi-Fi speed test apps typically test it multiple times before determining the final result.

What Is Upload Speed?

In the simplest terms, upload speed measures how fast you can send data to others. By others, we mean your friends and family on instant messaging applications, remote servers hosting various websites and services, and also your peers on file-sharing networks.

When Wi-Fi speed test apps measure upload speed, they establish multiple connections to various remote locations and send precisely calculated chunks of data. The apps then determine how much time it took before all data were received and use this information to provide you with your real upload speed.

What Is Download Speed?

As you can probably guess, download speed measures how fast you can download data from others. Wi-Fi speed test apps measure it by downloading chunks of data from remote locations and calculating exactly how long it takes for each chunk to download.

Are Internet Speed Tests Accurate?

There are many online sites that offer to check your Wi-Fi speed. They will check the upload and download speed as well as the ping rate of your wireless network. Testing your Internet connection with one of these tools will give you some numbers to work with, but can you trust the results?

Yes, Internet speed tests are typically accurate, but they are far from perfect. When a doctor measures a patient’s blood pressure, he or she knows there are a number of factors that may influence the measurement and compromise its accuracy. Similarly, there are many factors that may negatively influence the accuracy of Internet speed tests, and you need to be mindful of them in order to obtain accurate results. Among them are:

• The location of the testing device: Unless you’re testing a network using a wired connection, your location will have a dramatic impact on the results. The Wi-Fi signal has only a limited ability to penetrate obstacles, and it loses strength with each obstacle it penetrates. That’s why you probably won’t have a problem achieving the Internet speeds advertised by your ISP when standing right next to the router, but won’t be able to achieve anything close to them in a different room. What’s more, the Wi-Fi signal can be unpredictable, and a very small change in position can have a surprisingly large impact on your Internet speeds.
• The location of the test server: Testing with a server that is physically located a substantial distance from you can negatively impact the test.
• Testing while running a VPN: Any program running between your machine and the Internet can slow down your connection and may lead to inaccurate results.
• Online activity: While modern wireless routers prioritize important, real-time network traffic to provide users with a lag-free online experience, they can’t account for the impact online activity can have on Internet speed tests. If you want accurate results, you should never test Internet speed while doing other things online, including playing games, browsing the web, or chatting with friends and family.
• Testing at the wrong time: It’s a well-known fact that the Internet rush hour starts around 7 PM and ends around 11 PM. During these hours, people from all over the country are frantically checking social networks, downloading files, watching online content, or are just casually browsing the web. Even large ISPs may have problems with delivering their advertised Internet speeds during this rush hour, so it’s a good idea to check Wi-Fi speed at other times of the day. So, testing at peak usage times will not provide accurate results.
• Internet gear: Similar to computers and mobile devices, Internet equipment has evolved dramatically over the years, and modern routers offer much faster speeds and a wider range of features compared to older routers. If you’re still using the same router your ISP gave you 10 years ago, you should consider upgrading to something better otherwise you might not be able to check Internet speed properly. We recommend you to look for a router that supports the latest Wi-Fi standard and can broadcast on the 5 GHz band.
• Additional network-connected devices: When you test Wi-Fi speed you should attempt to restrict network access for all devices except the one conducting the test. Other devices on the network can slow down the speed if they are uploading or downloading during the test.
• Forgetting to reboot: Always start fresh when testing your connection speed by rebooting your machine before commencing with the test.
• Using the wrong testing tool: You should use an HTLM5 testing tool rather than one that runs Flash as the former is supported with no overhead on all standard web browsers. There are also desktop speed testing tools that eliminate the browser from the equation.
• Running the test once: Always run the test multiple times to ascertain if the results are similar. The average speed you are attaining over multiple tests will be a more accurate indicator of the true speed than any single test.

With all of the variables that can affect a Wi-Fi speed test, the results may not be an objective indicator of the speed of your wireless network. In some ways, the best way to look at the results of a Wi-Fi speed test is in relation to previous and future tests made on the same network. If you have made changes to your network meant to improve performance, you should see the average speed increase, but individual tests may still not be as fast as you would like.

When the goal of your testing is to see if your Wi-Fi implementation can withstand the demands of gaming or heavy streaming, repeated tests at various times will give you a sense of the capacity of your wireless network. Numerous tests reveal the range of your Wi-Fi speed and can alert you to issues that may need to be addressed to optimize your network and its coverage.