Cheapest Internet Service Providers of 2021

High-speed internet access can seem expensive, especially when you combine monthly plan prices with equipment fees, data overages, and rate increases that often occur once the introductory rate expires. To help you find low-cost rates, we analyzed our Best Internet Service Providers of 2022 rating and chose the most affordable ISPs on the list. Top companies include Suddenlink, RCN, Mediacom, Frontier, and AT&T Internet.

Some ISPs offer lower-cost rates to certain households. Through the Federal Communications Commissions new Emergency Broadband Benefit, households qualifying as low-income get a $50 monthly discount on their internet service. This is just one of several programs implemented to help make the internet affordable to everyone. Read on to learn more about plan features and availability of the Cheapest Internet Service Providers of 2022.

Finding which companies service your current or future abode can be challenging. Our map and the Fixed Broadband Deployment locator provided by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can help by showing which ISPs provide connectivity near a given location. But to know for sure which plans are available, youll have to go to each ISPs site and plug in the address. Sometimes the site will request you call to receive this information.

Among the providers in our Cheapest Internet Plans of 2022 rating, Frontier is most likely to cover your neighborhood, with service in 25 states. Mediacom offers service in 22 states and AT&T, in turn, is available in parts of 21 states. The other ISPs in our rating have more limited coverage. Once youve determined which ISPs are available in your area, youll have to see which offers the cheapest plan that meets your requirements.

Ideally, saving money on your broadband would only require trading slower speeds for lower prices. But evaluating the cheapest options at major providers also generally requires considering data limits (for basic plans data caps can be stringent). And many of the plans in our ratings come with significant rate increases after the first year or two, as introductory rates expire. Suddenlink and Mediacom impose the gentlest second-year increases, adding just $10 to their starting rates.

In general, you should hold out for a service offering at least 25 Mbps downloads the FCCs minimum definition of broadband and a data cap of at least 1 terabyte (TB). A higher data cap should take precedence over faster speed. Lower-resolution video streaming and longer download times should hurt less for cost-conscious shoppers than seeing the meter running on your internet bill for exceeding your data cap each month.

If youre on a tight budget, trying to save money on broadband an essentially unavoidable utility makes sense. The challenge is finding a service that is not frustrating to use and does not stop being a bargain after add-on fees and/or second-year rate hikes.

The least-painful compromise in cheap internet should be slower speeds. Netflix only requires a speed of 5 Mbps for high-definition (HD) streaming, and even the slowest plan profiled here offers download speeds four times faster than that. The upload speeds of our covered plans arent nearly as fast, but a longer wait to post a photo or video from your computer doesnt ruin your ability to share files.

Data caps, however, can cause serious problems if they force you to choose between holding off on downloading critical security fixes Apples can easily exceed 1 GB each or watch your account get dinged for $10 or more in overage fees. Be wary of any plan with a data cap lower than 1 TB, especially if its 250 GB or less.

You also have to watch out for a plague common in more expensive plans: exploding rates that increase after the first year or two of service. Internet provider plans can be vague about these post-promotional rate hikes. But, if you know youll be moving in a year, you can set aside this concern.

In addition to the companies in our rating of the Best Internet Service Providers, here are some others to consider:

The following describes our 360 approach to researching and analyzing internet service providers to guide prospective consumers.

1. We researched the companies and products people care most about.

U.S. News analyzed and compared a variety of publicly available data, including internet search data, to determine which internet service providers consumers are most interested in. We found 25 companies that stood out for further evaluation using the volume of searches and consumer research. After conducting a thorough analysis, we were able to condense the initial list to the 12 overall Best Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Taking a step further, out of the top 12 ISPs, we determined which is best by connection type, the best for gaming using latency (provided by the Federal Communications Commission) as a parameter, the best for rural areas, the best prepaid plans, and the cheapest in terms of the lowest regular rate. Fastest ISPs was also another sub-category to consider, but without the proper speed testing platform, this could not be captured appropriately. 360 Reviews instead offered consumers the fastest publicized ISP plans provided by our overall Best Internet Service Providers. With the companies determined, we researched their most important features to create a general layout of what consumers should know to assist with their purchasing decisions.

We compared the various plans, along with the monthly costs and associated fees that each company provided relative to its customers needs. The plans highlighted features such as connection type, download/upload speed, and data caps. We also considered the latency, consistency, and packet loss data provided by the Federal Communications Commission in regards to connection type and ISPs for gaming. With these factors in mind, we created a thorough set of guides that provides a 360 overview of what consumers should consider.

2. We created objective 360 Overall Ratings based on an analysis of third-party reviews.

Our scoring methodology is based on a composite analysis of the ratings and reviews published by credible third-party professional and consumer review sources. The ratings are not based on the personal opinions, tests, or experiences of U.S. News. To calculate the ratings:

(a) We compiled two types of third-party ratings and reviews:

Professional Ratings and Reviews: Many independent evaluating sources have published their assessments of internet service providers and products online. We consider several of these third-party reviews to be reputable and well-researched. However, professional reviewers often make recommendations that contradict one another. Rather than relying on a single source, U.S. News believes consumers benefit most when these opinions and recommendations are considered and analyzed collectively with an objective, consensus-based methodology.

Consumer Ratings and Reviews: U.S. News also reviewed published consumer ratings and reviews of internet service providers. Sources with a sufficient number of quality consumer ratings and reviews were included in our scoring model.

Please note that not all professional and consumer rating sources met our criteria for objectivity. Therefore, some sources were excluded from our model.

(b) We standardized the inputs to create a common scale.

The third-party review source data were collected in a variety of forms, including ratings, recommendations, and accolades. Before including each third-party data point in our scoring equation, we standardized it so that it could be compared accurately with data points from other review sources. We used the scoring methodology described below to convert these systems to a comparable scale.

The 360 scoring process first converted each third-party rating into a common 0 to 5 scale. To balance the distribution of scores within each sources scale, we used a standard deviation (or Z-Score) calculation to determine how each company that a source rated was scored in comparison to the sources mean score. We then used the Z-Score to create a standardized U.S. News score using the method outlined below:

Calculating the Z-Score: The Z-Score represents a data point’s relation to the mean measurement of the data set. The Z-Score is negative when the data point is below the mean and positive when it’s above the mean; a Z-Score of 0 means it’s equal to the mean. To determine the Z-Score for each third-party rating of a company, we calculated the mean of the ratings across all companies evaluated by that third-party source. We then subtracted the mean from the companys rating and divided it by the standard deviation to produce the Z-Score.

Calculating the T-Score: We used a T-Score calculation to convert the Z-Score to a 0-100 scale by multiplying the Z-Score by 10. To ensure that the mean was equal across all data points, we added our desired scoring mean (between 0 and 10) to the T-Score to create an adjusted T-Score.

Calculating the common-scale rating: We divided the adjusted T-Score, which is on a 100-point scale, by 20 to convert the third-party rating to a common 0-5 point system.

(c) We calculated the 360 Overall Score based on a weighted average model.

We assigned source weights to each source used in the consensus scoring model based on our assessment of how much the source is trusted and recognized by consumers and how much its published review process indicates that it is both comprehensive and editorially independent. The source weights are assigned on a 1-5 scale. Any source with an assigned weight less than 2 was excluded from the consensus scoring model.

Finally, we combined the converted third-party data points using a weighted average formula based on source weight. This formula calculated the consensus score for each product, which we call the 360 Overall Rating.