Best and Worst Home Internet Providers

CR members knock many of the biggest internet service providers, such as Cox, Optimum, Spectrum, and XFinity. But some smaller ISPs earn top scores in our survey.

By James K. Willcox
Senior Home & Tech Editor

Updated September 16, 2025

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A split screen of thumbs up and thumbs down — Nearly half the ISPs in CR's recent member survey earned our lowest rating for value.

When Consumer Reports asked its members for feedback on their internet plans, a handful of internet service providers (ISPs) received stellar ratings for value. But that was rare.

An overwhelming majority of the 54 companies in our ratings earned middling or worse marks for value in the 2025 survey, which collected responses from more than 73,000 CR members. A scant 13 percent of respondents said the value they received was top-notch.

In this article

People Give Top Marks to Fiber Connections
Bundles Remain Popular
Great Wireless Routers

Respondents were unhappy with other aspects of their ISPs, too. For instance, only 17 percent rated customer service or technical support as excellent.

That’s similar to what we’ve heard in previous surveys.

We also found that prices have gone up for CR members. The median price of broadband service was $89 a month, up $4 from the data we collected in 2024.

But there was at least one bright spot: Just over 60 percent of the respondents said their internet speed was very good or excellent. Median broadband speeds increased from 304 megabits per second in our 2024 survey to 364 Mbps this year. (That’s more than twice the 173-Mbps speed CR members reported back in 2022.)

People Give Top Marks to Fiber Connections

More than half (55 percent) of CR members get their internet service from a cable company, while just over a quarter (28 percent) have a fiber-optic connection. Just 11 percent have 5G home internet service, and even fewer people rely on DSL or satellite internet service.

Fiber isn’t the most common internet technology, but it’s got the happiest customers. In our survey, 70 percent of respondents with fiber service said they were very or completely satisfied.

And, in fact, the seven ISPs that earned the highest Overall Satisfaction Scores in our ratings offer fiber service. These include EPB (Electric Power Board of Chattanooga), Greenlight Networks, Ting, Google Fiber, i3 Broadband, GoNetSpeed, and Sonic.

EPB is the municipal broadband service in Chattanooga, Tennessee, while Greenlight Networks serves municipalities in the Rochester, Buffalo, Binghamton, and Albany, N.Y. areas.

Ting, initially available only in Charlottesville, Virginia, has now expanded to more than a dozen towns and cities across the country. You can get Google Fiber in more than 45 cities in 19 states, while i3 Broadband serves Central and Northern Illinois, Missouri, and parts of the East Bay area of Rhode Island.

Nine additional internet providers earned favorable Overall Satisfaction Scores.

Allo Fiber, which operates in 50 cities throughout Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, and Nebraska, earned top marks for service, speed, reliability, and technical support. Shentel, a provider located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, earned a top rating for both service and technical support. Allo, C-Spire Fiber, T-Mobile, Quantum Fiber (Lumen), and Hotwire Communications all received favorable scores for value.

Metronet, which serves customers throughout much of the Midwest and South, had favorable ratings for service, speed, technical support, and reliability. Lumos, which serves areas of North and South Carolina as well as Virginia, had favorable marks for speed, reliability, and technical support. GVTC, which operates in San Antonio and the Gonzales areas of Texas, had similar scores, except it was in the top ratings tier for technical support.

Conversely, eight ISPs received low ratings.

These include two satellite internet providers: Viasat Internet and HughesNet. Others include Optimum, the service offered by Altice, which acquired Cablevision and SuddenLink a few years back; Liberty Cablevision, which serves Puerto Rico and a limited number of mainland cities; GCI, a cable company that operates mainly in Alaska; Brightspeed, which took over former CenturyLink customers in rural and suburban communities in 20 states; Breezeline, formerly Atlantic Broadband, with service in 12 states; and Mediacom, which offers internet service under the XStream brand in 22 states, mainly in the Midwest and South regions.

Traditional satellite broadband providers such as HughesNet and Viasat, which send signals from space, have traditionally fared poorly in CR’s telecom surveys. But Starlink, which employs an array of small satellites in a much lower orbit around the earth, earned favorable scores for both speed and reliability. Starlink offers faster speeds and lower latency than traditional satellite services, meaning it responds more quickly to inputs from users.

Bundles Remain Popular

Despite the growing number of people cutting ties with their traditional TV services, plans that combine internet with TV and/or phone service continue to be popular. Just over 60 percent of CR members said they received internet as part of a bundle.

Television was the most popular service bundled with the internet, with 44 percent of our members choosing this option. About one-third of those who received a bundle have landline phone service, while 14 percent have cellphone service.

Great Wireless Routers

Most people use WiFi routers provided by their internet service providers, but buying your own router can save you money in the long run and potentially give you better performance, too. Here are some of the top products from CR’s WiFi router ratings at various prices. The models below earn high Overall Scores. They deliver fast speeds at a variety of distances, along with solid security and privacy protections.

James K. Willcox

James K. Willcox leads Consumer Reports’ coverage of TVs, streaming media services and devices, broadband internet service, and the digital divide. He's also a homeowner covering several home improvement categories, including power washers and decking. A veteran journalist, Willcox has written for Business Week, Cargo, Maxim, Men’s Journal, Popular Science, Rolling Stone, Sound & Vision, and others. At home, he’s often bent over his workbench building guitars or cranking out music on his 7.2-channel home theater sound system.