What is a good ping?
Ping, jitter and packet loss explained, with the numbers that matter for gaming and video calls.
The short answer
A good ping is under 50 ms for gaming and under 100 ms for video calls. Under 20 ms is excellent. Above 150 ms, lag is hard to ignore.
Ping, also called latency, is the time in milliseconds for a small message to travel to a server and back. Lower is better. Run the speed test to see yours.
Ping ranges and what they feel like
| Ping | Rating | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Under 20 ms | Excellent | Instant response, even in fast competitive games. |
| 20–50 ms | Good | Smooth for nearly everything. |
| 50–100 ms | Playable | Fine for calls and casual games. Fast games may feel slightly late. |
| 100–150 ms | Noticeable lag | Delay in games and a lag between speakers on calls. |
| Over 150 ms | Poor | Hard to play online or hold a smooth call. |
Jitter and packet loss
| Measure | Good | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| Jitter | Under 15 ms | Over 30 ms |
| Packet loss | 0% | Above 1% |
A good average ping can hide spikes. High jitter or packet loss shows up as stutters, freezes and robotic audio.
How to lower your ping
- Use an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi, or move closer to the router.
- Pause large downloads, uploads and cloud backups while you play or call.
- Check the bufferbloat grade. If it is C or worse, turn on smart queue management in your router.
- Turn off VPNs while testing; they add distance.
- Restart the router and modem, and update the router's firmware.
Speedhound measures ping to the nearest Cloudflare server, not to a specific game server. Game ping also depends on how far you are from the game's data center.
Need to know whether your speed is enough overall? See what a good internet speed is.
Questions
What is a good ping for gaming?
Under 50 ms is good for most games, and under 20 ms is excellent. Fast shooters feel better the lower it goes. Above 100 ms, delay is easy to notice.
What is a good ping for video calls?
Under 100 ms, with jitter under 30 ms. Calls tolerate higher ping than games, but unsteady ping makes audio cut out.
What is jitter?
Jitter is how much your ping varies from one packet to the next. A steady 40 ms ping feels better than one that swings between 10 ms and 120 ms.
What is packet loss?
Packet loss is the share of packets that never arrive. Anything above 1% can cause freezes and rubber-banding. Browsers cannot count lost packets directly, so Speedhound estimates it from timed-out ping requests.
Why is my ping high only sometimes?
Usually because the connection is busy: a download, upload or another person streaming fills your router's queue. That is bufferbloat, and the bufferbloat test measures it.
More from Speedhound
- Speed testDownload, upload, ping, jitter and bufferbloat in 20 seconds.
- Bufferbloat testSee how much lag your connection adds under load.
- Download time calculatorHow long a file takes at your speed.
- Good internet speedHow many Mbps you need for your household.