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Annual Internet Service Provider Review 2025: Methodology

Judging internet service providers (ISPs) is not a simple task. A variety of technology types, substantial regional variability, and the dozens of terms, policy, and feature variables attached to every internet plan make comparisons difficult. What one ISP considers important and best-in-class often doesn’t match what others are touting—and all of those likely don’t sync up with what consumers want. Choosing the right internet plan has become irrationally over-complicated.

That specific challenge is exactly why we endeavor to be as meticulous as possible, with nearly 30 million data points and customer sentiment as our ultimate guide.

Internet service exists as a privatized utility for people in the U.S., and we think it’s those people who should decide what’s important.

The Annual Internet Service Provider Review uses our ISP datasets to take an accurate and comprehensive snapshot of the internet landscape. Using a mix of customer feedback and thoughtful analysis from our team of internet experts, we then select the appropriate elements to build scores in five key areas:

Our primary goal of this analysis is to provide valuable provider insights in sync with the perspectives and needs of internet customers.

About our data

The annual review rests on four proprietary datasets and two public datasets:

  1. Performance data from the HighSpeedInternet.com speed test
  2. Data from our annual customer satisfaction survey
  3. HighSpeedInternet.com’s Internet Plan Index
  4. HighSpeedInternet.com outage log
  5. Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) macro outage data
  6. FCC provider coverage data

HighSpeedInternet.com speed test and performance data

At HighSpeedInternet.com, we have our own speed test (also available via Android and iOS mobile apps), which collects millions of ISP performance data points every year. The speed-test data points with the most influence on our scoring include download speed, upload speed, latency, and jitter. In the 2024 calendar year, the tool averaged approximately 45,000 tests per day.

Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey

Every year, HighSpeedInternet.com surveys thousands of internet customers to see how providers stack up. Our latest survey was the largest and most thorough yet, including responses from 10,000 internet customers from across the nation. We ask customers to rate their provider’s speeds, pricing, reliability, customer service, and overall quality. On top of ratings, customers also answer more specific questions, such as how often they experience outages and whether or not their provider has raised their rates.

Aside from provider performance, we inquire how customers feel about internet service in general and what factors have the most impact on their experience. These insights help us create balanced scores that are faithful to real-world customer needs and wants. For example, our methodology places the highest priority on pricing and value because that’s what customers say matters most year after year. Likewise, the next most influential factor is internet performance because, again, our data suggests that’s the next most important factor to customers after price. These priorities make the annual review a genuinely customer-centric analysis.

Internet Plan Index

At HighSpeedInternet.com, it’s our job to know providers inside and out. We maintain a comprehensive database of hundreds of internet plans from every major internet provider in the U.S. We track every detail of every plan, including prices, speeds, data caps, terms, and policy. The index is essential for comparing the combined value of provider offerings.

Our 2025 Annual Provider Review scored providers according to pricing activity over the 2024 calendar year and the most up-to-date pricing in January 2025.

Score Composition

Best Overall

Because internet service quality is multi-dimensional, our methodology considers every aspect of a provider, including its plan value, real-world performance, plan features, and the satisfaction level of its customers. Then, we use survey data to determine which factors mean the most for you, the customer. Finally, our team of internet experts takes all that data, analysis, and customer feedback to create a balanced and meaningful measurement of a provider’s overall quality.

Score anatomy (approx.): 44% pricing and value, 38% speed and performance, 18% customer feedback

Fastest ISP

When customers think of internet speed, the overwhelming majority think of download speed: the performance metric most indicative of technical service quality. That’s why we use download speed—and only download speed—to determine our speed scores. Our fastest ISP award goes to the provider with the fastest average download speed, period. Any ISP with less than 2,000 speed-test results is excluded from the speed analysis.

Score composition: 100% average download speed

What about upload speed, latency, and jitter?

We 100% believe in the value of these measurements. Symmetrical speeds, low latency, and low jitter are all substantially rewarded in other areas of our methodology.

Note for 2025 Fastest ISP: Although the following did not factor into our speed scoring, the 2025 Fastest ISP (Brightspeed) also achieved the fastest median upload, the fastest median download speed, and the fastest average upload speed.

Best Value

Our value methodology looks for the providers that offer the best deals with a strong preference for plans that make the most sense for the average household. We did this because it was an obvious cue from our research and customer survey findings. Money matters, and when inflation is on the rise, millions of households look for budget-conscious solutions to everyday expenses, including their internet bill.

We start by gauging plan value with a cost-bandwidth ratio. Plans with advertised speeds below 940Mbps carry the most weight as we consider these plans to have the most impact. For plans with speeds of 940Mbps and above, score influence starts to drop dramatically. Gigabit plans and above are not only considerably beyond the needs of the vast majority, but their prices often don’t fit with households on any kind of budget.

Because internet plan prices change frequently, we observe and log ISP prices throughout the year and base a significant (approx. 35%) of our value scoring on weight-average pricing over the previous calendar year.

In an effort to further favor affordability, we apply a flat reward to any ISP with an internet plan for $50 or less and for any ISP that provides unlimited data with 50% or more of its plans.

Score composition (approx.): 35% pricing history (2024 calendar year), 35% current pricing (January 2025), 30% affordability and policy

Most Reliable

We can’t overstate the importance of internet reliability as internet service is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. We choose our most reliable internet provider based on customer reliability ratings, our internet outage log, and IODA macro outage data.

Our outage log records major outages for a provider. We then compare the number of recorded outages in the previous calendar year to the network size of the ISP to create a basic outage score. We exclude outages that result from severe weather events and disasters or any circumstance that also results in a power outage.

IODA data only tracks very large outages with limited resolution; it is rare for an ISP to suffer from a confirmed macro outage affecting a large enough portion of its network to register on IODA as an outage alert. However, if this does happen, it suggests the possibility of a major failure in an ISP’s network. We carefully factor in IODA data into our overall reliability score for each ISP.

Score Anatomy (approx.): 35% customer reliability rating, 25% outage ratio, 25% macro outage score, 15% network size handicap.

Best Customer Service

Our yearly survey allows us to keep an eye on which providers go above and beyond to provide quality customer interactions. Years of survey data tell us that customer service is one of the most important ingredients for happy internet customers.

Score composition: 100% customer service rating

Customer’s Choice

In each HighSpeedInternet.com customer survey, we ask internet customers to think on all the aspects of their internet service and assign an overall rating for their internet provider. This rating, more than any other, reveals how much a customer values their ISP and serves as our best gauge of provider approval and popularity. Each year, the ISP with the highest overall rating receives the HighSpeedInternet.com Customer’s Choice Award.

Author -

Austin worked as a broadband technician installing and troubleshooting countless home internet networks for some of the largest ISPs in the U.S. He became a freelance writer in 2020 specializing in software guides. After graduating with a BS in technical communication from Arizona State University, he joined the team at HighSpeedInternet.com where he focuses on home network improvement and troubleshooting.

Editor - Jessica Brooksby

Jessica loves bringing her passion for the written word and her love of tech into one space at HighSpeedInternet.com. She works with the team’s writers to revise strong, user-focused content so every reader can find the tech that works for them. Jessica has a bachelor’s degree in English from Utah Valley University and seven years of creative and editorial experience. Outside of work, she spends her time gaming, reading, painting, and buying an excessive amount of Legend of Zelda merchandise.