Starlink speeds rise even as cheaper fees boost adoption

Starlink's US performance is improving even as its subscriber base grows, according to the newest 2026 report. The Speedtest data compares the first halves of 2025 and 2026, and the biggest gain was in upload speed. The national median rose 42% to 20.73 Mbps, and every state and Washington, D.C., improved by between 25% and 70% as the newer V2 Mini satellites now make up about two-thirds of the operational fleet and there is no upload speed cap.

Starlink download speeds

Download speeds are a more mixed story, with a much more modest increase that is, however, not a sign of congestion. While the national median is up 12% to 119.71 Mbps, it dropped in 16 states and D.C. as a lot of users took advantage of Starlink's constant monthly rate promos to get on the cheapest, speed-capped 100 Mbps plan. Still, the share of US users who reach the FCC's 100/20 Mbps broadband benchmark has more than doubled, from 18.9% to 40%, and that's what counts when it comes to federal or state subsidies.

Latency was roughly flat nationally but improved in 49 states and D.C. The number of jurisdictions with a median below 40 ms went from 11 to 25. This is attributed to more gateways and interconnection points closer to users and to the lower orbits the FCC approved for many satellites.

Starlink's US Speedtest samples rose 41.8% year over year as more people started testing what the network provides. SpaceX reported 13.6 million consumer subscribers worldwide in Q3, up 1.6 million from the previous quarter, and about a fifth of them are in the US. Roughly nine in ten new US users came from DSL, cable, or fixed wireless rather than fiber, yet Starlink is also pushing into cities, where urban Speedtest users grew 73% compared with 33% for rural ones.

States with the fastest Starlink

Utah has the fastest Starlink downloads, while the Southeast is the slowest, with Florida at the very bottom. There are apparently fewer users per beam in the West and an orbital layout that favors mid-northern latitudes. Texas, Florida, and Washington are among the states with the most speed tests and also among the ten slowest for download. Florida's median download still jumped 50%, which suggests SpaceX is directing new capacity to its busiest markets to try and remedy the congestion there.

Starlink is not the fastest Internet option in the US, though. Its median still sits below every fiber provider and all three major 5G fixed wireless providers, and T-Mobile's median is almost double Starlink's. The cheaper capped plans may be dragging Starlink's median down, while most fixed wireless plans are uncapped.

Ahead of its IPO, SpaceX kept running Starlink plan promos throughout the year that saw monthly rates drop to $29 even so that it could boast of subscriber and network growth before raising more than $85 billion. Starlink dishes like the Standard Kit that is now discounted on Amazon were also offered as free rentals.

Cheap plans and dishes attract price-sensitive customers, though, which reflected somewhat negatively on median download speeds that barely budged. A bigger Starlink speed leap would depend on the V3 satellites, which offer ten times the capacity of a V2 Mini, and SpaceX has just started launching those into orbit, so their effect would only be tangible in the 2027 reports.