United States

Based on crowdsourced speed tests across the United States, T-Mobile currently leads in median download speeds. Open "See the numbers" on the carrier cards above to compare every carrier's speeds.

We aggregate speed tests from real devices in the United States and calculate the median download speed, upload speed, latency, and reliability values across all carriers. Reliability blends speed consistency and coverage quality to estimate how dependable a network feels in everyday use. Results update as new tests are submitted, and we typically update the values every week.

The network performance values summarize median download speed, upload speed, latency, and reliability across all carriers in the United States. Higher download and upload speeds with lower latency indicate faster responsiveness, while a higher reliability score indicates more dependable real-world performance.

Each carrier card has a five-dot rating for coverage, performance, and reliability, plus an overall rating. Coverage is how much of the United States the FCC reports as covered. Performance is the typical download and upload speeds and response time in real speed tests. Reliability is how fast the slowest 10% of tests are and how often tests connect, so it shows how a network holds up when it's busy. The overall rating weighs coverage 50%, reliability 30%, and performance 20%. A whole country takes in wide areas nobody lives in, so country-wide ratings are more lenient than the ratings on state, county, and city pages.

The reliability score in the performance section summarizes how dependable mobile performance is in the United States. It is separate from the five-dot reliability rating on the carrier cards. It uses a 0.0 to 10.0 scale (higher is better) and is calculated from real-world speed test percentiles with weighted components: download (50%), latency (30%), and upload (20%). It evaluates the lower-end experience using the bottom 10%, 5%, and 1% percentiles when enough samples are available. If local speed testing is limited, a coverage-based fallback is used from signal quality distribution (great/good/poor).

MNOs own and operate the cellular network infrastructure, while MVNOs lease access to those networks and sell service under their own brand. MVNOs have the same network coverage as the MNOs they lease from.

We currently are tracking 47 total carriers in the United States. There are 11 MNOs operating their own networks and 36 MVNOs.

Use the interactive map to check signal strength at your exact address. Visit the CoverageMap interactive map to explore 4G/5G availability.