What Is a Good Ping? Ping and Jitter Explained
A good ping is under 100 milliseconds (ms) for video calls, and as low as you can get for fast online games, where under about 50 ms usually feels responsive. Jitter, how much your ping jumps around, should stay under 30 ms. Those two video call limits come from Microsoft’s published network requirements for Teams. Below 20 to 30 ms is about as good as most home connections get, and much of it depends on how far away the server is.
There is no official “good ping” for gaming. The best you can do is know your numbers, know what pushes them up, and fix what you can. This guide explains both measures with real test results. To see your own ping and jitter, run our free internet speed test.
What is ping?
Ping, also called latency, is the time it takes a tiny message to travel from your device to a server and back. It is measured in milliseconds, and lower is better.
Speed (Mbps) and ping are different things. Speed is how much data can flow each second, like the width of a road. Ping is how long one trip takes, like the drive time. A fast connection can still have a slow ping if the server is far away or the line is busy. Ping matters most for things that react in real time: online games, video and voice calls, and remote desktop.
What is jitter?
Jitter is how much your ping changes from one moment to the next. If five pings take 30, 31, 30, 32 and 31 ms, jitter is low and the connection feels smooth. If they take 30, 95, 28, 120 and 35 ms, the average is still not terrible, but calls break up and games stutter.
Our tool uses Cloudflare’s open-source test engine, which calculates jitter as the average gap between one ping and the next, from 20 pings sent while your connection is idle. Your ping is the median of those 20 measurements.
Good ping and jitter for each use
| Use | Ping (round trip) | Jitter | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Teams calls, device to Microsoft’s network | Under 100 ms | Under 30 ms | Microsoft |
| Microsoft Teams, stricter target for a company network | Under 60 ms | Under 15 ms | Microsoft |
| Phone and voice calls in general | Under about 300 ms (150 ms each way) | Low | ITU-T G.114 |
| Browsing, streaming, downloads | Hardly matters | Hardly matters | |
| Fast online games (shooters, fighting, racing) | As low as possible. Under about 50 ms usually feels responsive | As low as possible | No official standard |
The ITU, the UN agency for telecoms standards, notes in Recommendation G.114 that earlier versions said most applications are not significantly affected if one-way delay stays below 150 ms. It treats 400 ms as an upper limit for network planning. A ping test measures the round trip, so 150 ms one way is roughly 300 ms of ping.
For games, there is no standards body, and every game handles delay differently. Slower turn-based or strategy games cope fine with 100 ms or more. In fast shooters, the player with the lower ping sees and reacts to things slightly sooner, which is why competitive players chase every millisecond.
Our own test: idle ping vs ping under load
We ran our Internet Speed Test three times on 11 November 2026 on one home connection over Wi-Fi. Besides normal ping, the tool also measures ping while it is downloading and uploading, which is what happens when someone else in your home is streaming or backing up photos.
| Test | Ping (idle) | Jitter (idle) | Highest ping while busy | Rise under load |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 39 ms | 9 ms | 151 ms | +112 ms |
| 2 | 42 ms | 68 ms | 70 ms | +28 ms |
| 3 | 31 ms | 12 ms | 83 ms | +52 ms |
What this shows:
- Idle ping (31 to 42 ms) was good each time, well inside Microsoft’s 100 ms limit.
- Jitter was 9 to 12 ms in two tests, but 68 ms in one. At that moment the connection would have failed Microsoft’s 30 ms jitter limit, and a call could have stuttered. One test is not enough, so test a few times.
- Ping rose by up to 112 ms when the line was busy. That is the most useful result here. It means games and calls on this connection will lag whenever someone else starts a big download, even though the idle ping looks fine.
Why ping rises when the line is busy (bufferbloat)
When your connection is full, your router or modem holds extra data in a queue (a buffer) instead of dropping it. Your game or call packets have to wait in that queue behind the download. The bigger the queue, the longer the wait. This is often called bufferbloat, and it is the reason “the internet lags when someone is downloading”.
You can see it in our tool as “Lag when the line is busy” in the summary after a test. A small rise is normal. A rise of 100 ms or more, as in our test 1, is worth fixing.
What affects your ping
- Distance to the server. Data cannot travel faster than light, and light in fibre cables is slower than in a vacuum. A game server on another continent will always have a higher ping than one in your own country.
- Wi-Fi. Wireless adds delay and, above all, jitter, especially through walls or with many devices nearby.
- A busy connection. Downloads, uploads, cloud backups and 4K streams on the same line push ping up (see bufferbloat above).
- Your type of connection. Fibre and cable usually have lower ping than older copper lines, mobile data or satellite.
- VPNs. A VPN sends your traffic through another server first, which adds distance.
How to lower your ping and jitter
- Use a cable. Plug your PC or console into the router with an Ethernet cable. This is the single most reliable fix for jitter.
- Pick the nearest server in your game’s settings, if it lets you choose a region.
- Pause big downloads and uploads on other devices while you play or call, including cloud photo backups and game updates.
- Turn on your router’s QoS or “smart queue” setting, if it has one. These features limit queues so that small game and call packets do not wait behind downloads.
- Turn off your VPN while gaming, unless you need it.
- Restart your router if ping is suddenly much worse than usual, then test again.
- Ask your provider if your ping is high even with a cable and nothing else running.
How to test your ping
- Open our Internet Speed Test on the device you play or call from.
- Close other apps that use the internet.
- Press Start speed test. Ping and jitter are measured first, then download and upload.
- Read Ping and Jitter in the results, and the lag when the line is busy line in the summary.
- Test once on Wi-Fi and once with a cable, and compare. Your last five results are kept in your browser so you can see the difference.
Note that our tool measures ping to the nearest Cloudflare server, not to your game’s server. Your ping in a game also depends on where that game’s servers are. The test is best for checking your own connection: Wi-Fi, router and line.
Summary
- Ping is the round-trip time to a server. Jitter is how much it varies. Lower is better for both.
- For video calls, aim for ping under 100 ms and jitter under 30 ms (Microsoft’s Teams requirement).
- For fast games, aim as low as you can. Under about 50 ms usually feels responsive.
- Watch ping under load. A big rise means lag whenever someone else uses the internet.
Want to know if your download and upload speeds are good enough too? See our guide to what a good internet speed is, or test your connection now.