Where is the cheapest internet?

100 Mbps should be enough for everyone

Several factors can affect the quality of an internet connection. Above all, the nominal speed of the plan, the technology used to connect to the internet, interference with the wireless signal, network load, and also the quality of the website visited and its distance from the server. According to data from the portal Speedtest.net, the global average speed of cable internet is 70 Mbps (December 2019). In most countries (55 out of 62), however, the most commonly used speed is 100 Mbps (55 out of 62). This speed allows you to browse websites quickly on several devices at the same time and to watch streaming portals in the highest 4K (UHD) quality.

In some countries, such as Poland, Romania, France or Singapore, major domestic providers no longer offer such a low "speed". In Poland and Romania the minimum plan is 150 Mbps, in France it is 200 Mbps and in Singapore 500 Mbps. In countries such as Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam, however, a 100 Mbps connection is not yet available to a wider range of people.

Of the countries surveyed, residents of South Africa pay the most for internet at 100 Mbps. The price of such a connection in South Africa is €79/month on average. And more than €62/month is paid by residents of Northern Europe – Iceland and Norway.

A 100 Mbps connection, which is comfortably sufficient for a household, is cheapest for users in Eastern European countries such as Moldova (€8.74/month), Russia (€6.96/month) and Ukraine (€5.60/month).

If we included Poland and Romania with their "minimum" of 150 Mbps, they would be placed at the bottom of the ranking (€10.63/month in Poland and €8/month in Romania).

TIP: Also read the article How to get a better internet connection

Internet for €20/month

We also sorted all the offers we found by another criterion. We found out how fast an internet connection you can buy for €20/month (roughly CZK 466). Of the 62 countries included in this research, we had to leave out 20, including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Chile, Italy, Portugal, the USA and South Africa – in these countries fibre internet costs more than €20/month. The graphic below shows the results for individual countries.

The fastest internet, 1 Gbps for less than €20/month, is available in Poland, Romania, Moldova, India, Hungary, Latvia and Ukraine. In Russia you can get internet access at 890 Mbps for the same price, and in China and Lithuania at 600 Mbps.

Cosmic speed

If your internet speed reaches 1 Gbps, you can download a 1 GB file in 8 seconds. It is currently the best internet offer on the market. However, this research did not set out to determine whether such a maximum connection speed is necessary or useful in practice. We focused on how much it costs and where this gigabit internet is actually available to ordinary users.

According to research by the portal Picodi, a 1 Gbps internet connection is a luxury good in many countries. In 22 out of 44 countries where providers have this plan on offer, the monthly fee for internet is higher than €50. The most expensive internet from this point of view is in Austria and Australia, at €199 and €209 per month respectively. Conversely, this fastest internet is cheapest in Romania, where a gigabit connection costs only €8/month. In the Czech Republic, the monthly fee for a 1 Gbps plan is fairly high, at roughly €33 per month.

Methodology

The research included 62 countries, including the largest English- and Spanish-speaking countries, G20 member states and countries of the former Soviet Union.

In our research we took into account the largest providers of unlimited home internet, which offer connections over optical fibres or the most modern technologies available in each country. We considered the prices that apply after the end of promotional discounts. We left out bundles of several services, such as internet + television, internet + streaming services, etc. We did not include smaller local providers that offer internet within a single area or in a few towns. When calculating the amount, we also took into account router rental, where this fee appeared for a given provider. The full list of countries and suppliers can be found here.

Exchange rates used for currency conversion were the average rates according to Google Finance for October and November 2019.

The author of the research is Picodi. If you decide to share this content, you must credit the research author Picodi.com and this link. 

If you still feel that local providers charge far too much for their services, now read the article Internet costs: What affects the amount of your monthly bill :)

Updated 5 March 2024