Internet Speed for Zoom and Streaming: Official Recommendations

Short answer: a few Mbps per stream; trouble comes from simultaneous use

Lining up the official recommendations, one HD video or one meeting usually needs about 1 to 5 Mbps. Even 4K video needs 15 to 25 Mbps per stream.

Problems usually start when several people in the household watch video at the same time, or when someone downloads a large file during a meeting. The speed you need is the sum of everything in use at once.

What download, upload, ping and jitter mean, and the thresholds this site uses (under 10 Mbps download = insufficient, under 5 Mbps upload = insufficient, and so on), are covered in what internet speed do I need. This article looks at how those thresholds relate to each service's official figures.

Official recommended speeds for streaming services

These are the download recommendations from each company's official help pages. All are given as the figure for playing one stream.

YouTube presents its values as a guide to "sustained speed". The Prime Video values come from a help page about live streaming problems. (Note) Prime Video's unit differs between pages: the Japanese page says "MB/s" (1 MB/s or more, 5 MB/s or more), while the English page says "Mb/s". 1 MB/s equals 8 Mbps, so if the Japanese wording were correct, HD would need the equivalent of 40 Mbps, a very different figure. The table uses the Mb/s values from the English page, but the official help does not make it possible to confirm which one is right.

Most streaming services adjust picture quality to match your connection speed (Prime Video says it streams at the best quality the available bandwidth allows). If your speed falls below the recommendation, the picture may get blurrier or playback may pause.

Services that publish no recommended speed: estimating from data-per-hour figures

Some streaming services do not give a recommended speed in Mbps at all. Instead, their help pages say how much data each quality setting uses, for example how many hours of video you can watch per 1 GB. You can turn that into an average speed yourself: 1 GB is 1,000 MB, which is 8,000 Mb, so divide 8,000 by the playback time in seconds. If a setting uses 1 GB per hour, that is 8,000 ÷ 3,600 ≈ 2.2 Mbps.

Keep in mind that the result is only an average. The actual amount of data, and so the speed needed, can change with your connection and with what you are watching, and services that adjust quality automatically may use more or less than the published figure suggests. Treat the estimate as a rough guide and compare it with the thresholds in the next section, which already include some headroom.

Download speed needed by picture quality, and this site's thresholds

Here the official figures are grouped by picture quality and placed next to this site's thresholds.

The thresholds are higher than the official figures because they leave room for two things: measured speed goes up and down with the time of day, and other devices are usually using the connection at the same time.

Official recommended speeds for video meeting services

Meetings use not only download (receiving) but also upload, to send your own video. Here are the official figures, upload and download side by side.

For receiving gallery view, Zoom gives 2.0 Mbps for 25 tiles and 4.0 Mbps for 49 tiles. For audio only, Zoom needs 60 to 80 kbps, and Slack huddles need 200 kbps down and 100 kbps up. Screen sharing is small on Zoom, at 50 to 150 kbps; on Slack huddles it has the same requirements as video.

Every service stays within 4 Mbps upload. This site treats 5 Mbps upload or more as "standard" to leave some headroom above that.

Why upload and ping matter in meetings

Watching video only involves receiving, so enough download speed is all you need. If data arrives a little late, the part that was loaded ahead of time (the buffer) covers the gap.

Meetings are different. Your camera video and audio are sent continuously in real time, so if upload is not enough, your video freezes or your voice cuts out on the other person's screen. Everything can look fine on your own screen while the other side is not receiving it.

Because there is no buffer to fall back on, ping (response time) and jitter (how much that time varies) matter too. Aim for ping under 50 ms and jitter under 30 ms on this site's thresholds. Upload is explained in more detail in what is a good upload speed.

Add it up for simultaneous use

When several people use the connection at once, add up what each person uses. Here are some examples using the official figures.

• Three people watching 4K video in separate rooms: with Netflix, 15 × 3 = 45 Mbps; with Disney+, 25 × 3 = 75 Mbps. You need the "sufficient" band (30 to 100 Mbps).
• One person in a meeting, two watching HD video: download is Teams 4.0 + YouTube 1080p 5 × 2 = 14 Mbps. Upload is only needed for the one person in the meeting.
• Two people in meetings at the same time: upload is 3.8 × 2 = 7.6 Mbps with Zoom at 1080p. A connection with around 5 Mbps upload will not be enough.

Upload is the one people tend to overlook. Fiber connections often have plenty of download speed, but upload grows with every person in a meeting. Photo syncing to the cloud or backups running in the background use even more upload.

Checklist before working from home

When testing, stop other devices from using the connection and run the test a few times under the same conditions. The steps are in how to run an accurate speed test.

What to do when your speed is not enough

1. Lower the quality: going from 4K to 1080p alone cuts the speed you need to a third or less, based on the official figures. In meetings, lowering your camera resolution or turning the camera off while you are not speaking also reduces upload.
2. Use a wired connection: connecting just your meeting PC by Ethernet cable takes Wi-Fi congestion and weak signal out of the picture.
3. Shift the timing: move large downloads and backups to times without meetings, or to late at night.
4. Reduce the number of streams at once: another option is to ask others to lower their video quality only while you are in a meeting.

If it is still not enough, narrow the cause down to the line, the router or the Wi-Fi. For specific steps, see how to increase internet speed and why your internet is slow.

FAQ

What internet speed do I need for Zoom?

Zoom's official help recommends 3.8 Mbps up and 3.0 Mbps down for 1:1 video at 1080p, and 2.6 Mbps up and 1.8 Mbps down for group video at 720p. To leave some headroom, this site suggests 5 Mbps or more up and 10 Mbps or more down.

What is Netflix's recommended speed in Mbps?

The Netflix Help Center gives 3 Mbps or more for HD (720p), 5 Mbps or more for Full HD (1080p), and 15 Mbps or more for 4K. If several devices watch at the same time, add up the figure for each one.

How many Mbps do I need to stream 4K video?

The official figures per stream are 15 Mbps or more for Netflix, 20 Mbps for YouTube and 25.0 Mbps for Disney+. This site's thresholds suggest 30 Mbps or more download.

When video freezes in a meeting, is it download or upload?

If the other person's video freezes, suspect your download (or their upload). If others tell you your video has stopped, suspect your upload. Both can also happen when ping or jitter is high, so check all four numbers together with the speed test.

Related guides

• Guidelines
  What Is a Good Internet Speed? How to Read Speed Test Results

  What download, upload, ping and jitter mean on a speed test, with tables of good internet speeds by activity and connection type, and what to do next.

• Guidelines
  What Is a Good Upload Speed? And Why Upload Is Slow

  Good upload speed by use case: video calls, live streaming and cloud backup. Why upload is often slower than download, and how long big uploads take.

• Slow connection
  How to Increase Internet Speed: 11 Fixes, Biggest Impact First

  11 ways to increase internet and Wi-Fi speed, ordered by impact: which symptom each fixes, cost and time, when 10G helps, and how to check the result.