Ping Test: Check Your Latency in Milliseconds

Send a series of small requests to the server and see your ping, the fastest and slowest replies, and any requests that failed.

Ping is the time it takes for a message to travel from your device to a server and back. It is measured in milliseconds, and it is the number that decides whether an online game feels instant or sluggish, whether a video call has awkward pauses, and how snappy websites feel when you click. A fast download speed cannot make up for high ping, because every single request still has to make the round trip.

This ping test sends a series of small requests from your browser to this site’s server and times each reply. You get your typical ping, the lowest and highest replies, the average, and a count of any requests that failed, with a bar chart so you can see spikes at a glance.

How to run the ping test

1. Choose how many pings to send. Twenty five is a good balance of speed and accuracy, fifty gives a steadier picture.
2. Press Start ping test and keep the tab open. Each ping takes a fraction of a second.
3. Watch the chart fill in. Teal bars are replies, red bars are requests that failed or took longer than three seconds.
4. Read your ping, lowest, highest and average values, and the verdict below the chart.
5. Run it again at a different time of day, or on a wired connection, to compare.

How this ping test works

Round trips over HTTP

Traditional ping tools use a network protocol called ICMP, which browsers are not allowed to send. Instead, this test sends tiny web requests to a lightweight endpoint on the server and measures the time until the answer arrives. That is the same path your browser uses for every website and web game, so it reflects the latency you actually experience.

Why the first request is left out

The very first request has to set up the connection, including the encrypted handshake, which adds extra time that will not repeat. The test sends one warm-up request and discards it, so your results reflect steady-state latency.

Which number to trust

The headline ping is the median, the middle value of all replies. It ignores one-off spikes that would drag an average up. The average, lowest and highest are shown too, and a big gap between lowest and highest is a sign of an unstable connection.

Failed requests

Any request that errors or takes longer than three seconds is marked as failed. On a healthy connection that number should be zero. Regular failures point to packet loss, which hurts games and calls far more than a slightly higher ping.

Reading the chart

Each bar is one request, in the order it was sent, and the dashed line marks your median. Bars of similar height mean a steady connection. A few tall bars among short ones are spikes, and red bars are failures. If the bars grow taller toward the end, something on your network started using bandwidth during the test.

What is a good ping?

Distance plays a big part. Light in fibre travels roughly 200 kilometres per millisecond, so a server on another continent always adds tens of milliseconds, however fast your line is. That is why games let you choose a region close to you.

Ping versus jitter versus speed

Ping is how long one round trip takes. Jitter is how much that time varies from one packet to the next. Speed, or bandwidth, is how much data can flow at once. A connection can have plenty of speed and still feel bad if ping or jitter is high. Measure variation over time with the jitter test, and check bandwidth with the internet speed test.

How to lower your ping

• Use a wired connection. Ethernet usually cuts ping and removes the spikes that Wi-Fi adds.
• Move closer to the router or use the 5 GHz or 6 GHz band if you must use Wi-Fi.
• Stop background uploads. Cloud backups and large uploads fill the queue and raise latency for everything else, an effect known as bufferbloat.
• Pick nearby servers in games and apps whenever there is a choice.
• Restart the router if ping is suddenly much higher than usual.
• Turn off VPNs while gaming unless you need them, since they add an extra hop.

Where ping matters most

Online gaming

In shooters and fighting games, every millisecond of ping delays when your actions reach the server. Combine a low ping with fast personal reflexes, which you can measure in the reaction time test, and a smooth display confirmed by the FPS test.

Calls and remote work

Above about 150 ms, conversations start to overlap as people talk at the same time. Low ping keeps calls natural.

Everyday browsing

A page load involves dozens of requests, so each extra millisecond of ping is multiplied many times. For device details that can affect results, such as connection type, see the browser information tool.

Frequently asked questions

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