What Is a Good Upload Speed?
A good upload speed is 10–20 Mbps for most households. That’s enough for HD video calls, online gaming and posting videos. If you work from home with several people on calls, or you live stream, aim for 20–50 Mbps. Under 3 Mbps, video calls start to look blocky.
Upload vs download
Download speed is how fast data comes to you. Upload speed is how fast you send it. Most of what we do online is downloading, so plans are usually lopsided: a 300 Mbps cable plan might upload at just 10–20 Mbps. Fibre plans are often symmetrical, with the same speed both ways.
How much upload speed you need
| Activity | Upload needed (per person) |
|---|---|
| Email, messaging, browsing | Under 1 Mbps |
| Online gaming | 1–3 Mbps |
| Video calls, HD (Zoom, Teams, Meet) | 2–4 Mbps |
| Screen sharing while on a call | 3–5 Mbps |
| Live streaming in 720p (Twitch, YouTube) | 4–6 Mbps |
| Live streaming in 1080p | 8–10 Mbps |
| Uploading videos and big files | As much as you can get |
For live streaming, leave headroom: your upload should be about 1.5× the stream’s bitrate so it doesn’t drop frames when someone else uses the internet.
How long uploads take
- 1 GB video to YouTube: about 13 minutes at 10 Mbps, under 2 minutes at 100 Mbps.
- 50 GB photo library to the cloud: about 11 hours at 10 Mbps, or 1 hour 7 minutes at 100 Mbps.
The formula is the same as for downloads: size in MB × 8 ÷ speed in Mbps = seconds. See what Mbps means for the details.
How to check your upload speed
- Pause photo backups and sync apps on your phone and computer. They upload in the background without telling you.
- Run the upload speed test, ideally next to the router.
- Compare the result with the upload figure on your plan, not the headline download speed.
Why upload problems make calls freeze
When your upload is full, say during a cloud backup, your router queues everything else behind it, including your voice and video. Ping jumps and calls stutter, even though the speed test looks fine. This is called bufferbloat, and it’s far more common on upload than download. Check it with the bufferbloat test and read how to fix bufferbloat.
How to get faster upload speeds
- Use 5 GHz WiFi or a cable. Your device’s radio is weaker than the router’s, so poor WiFi hits upload hardest. See 2.4 GHz vs 5 GHz.
- Schedule backups for overnight.
- Turn on QoS or Smart Queue on your router so calls get priority.
- Check fibre availability. If you need fast upload, a symmetrical fibre plan is the biggest upgrade.