What Internet Speed Can I Actually Get at My Address?

There are two answers to "what internet speed can I get here?" and they almost never match. One is the number an ISP prints on a coverage map. The other is what the speed tests people actually ran on that street recorded. SignalScout gives you the second one.

Advertised, available, and actual are three different numbers

Before you can judge an address, you need to know which of three claims you are looking at.

• Advertised speed is the top tier an ISP sells in that market. It is a best case: wired, one device, off-peak, and usually described as "up to".
• Available service is what a provider has filed with the FCC saying it does serve, or could serve within ten business days, at a given location. It is a self-reported claim about capability, not a measurement.
• Actual measured speed is what real connections at real houses returned when someone hit "go" on a speed test.

The gap between the first two and the third is the whole reason this tool exists. A block can be listed as having gigabit cable while the median measured download on that block is 180 Mbps and the median upload is 12 Mbps. Both statements can be true at once: gigabit is sold there, and almost nobody buys it or gets it.

Where the measured numbers come from

SignalScout uses Ookla Open Data, the quarterly public release of aggregated Speedtest results. Individual tests are grouped into map tiles roughly 610 metres on a side at the equator (narrower the further north you go), and each tile carries the median download, median upload, median latency, and the number of tests behind it. The site bundles 1.63 million US fixed-broadband tiles and 424,000 mobile tiles from the 2026 Q1 vintage.

The lookup chain is simple: your address goes to the US Census Geocoder to get coordinates, the FCC Area API returns the census block FIPS code and county, and the coordinates select the tile you sit in plus the tiles around you. You see the fixed-broadband picture and the mobile picture separately, because they are different networks with different physics.

Reading your tile

Upload deserves special attention. Download speeds have inflated across every technology, so a 400 Mbps download tells you relatively little about what is in the ground. Upload separates the technologies sharply, and it is the number that breaks first when you are on a work call.

What the Connectivity Score means

The 0–100 Connectivity Score is a percentile rank: it places the measured speed at your address against the national distribution of fixed-broadband tiles. A score near 50 means the address is roughly typical for the United States. The reference points behind it:

Two things fall out of that table. First, the bar for "fine" is lower than marketing suggests — a quarter of the country measures under 148 Mbps and gets along. Second, the bottom decile is genuinely rough: 57 Mbps shared across a household with two people on calls is a daily argument.

The limits, stated plainly

Measured data answers a different question from availability data, and it has its own blind spots.

• SignalScout does not list which ISPs serve your address. The FCC's provider-availability dataset needs a registered account for bulk download and the per-address API on the FCC map is bot-blocked, so provider lists are a planned addition rather than a current feature.
• A median reflects the plans neighbours bought, not the best plan sold. A street full of cheap 100 Mbps plans will show a slow median even where gigabit is on the pole.
• Sparse tiles are noisy. In rural areas a tile may hold a dozen tests from three households. Look at the surrounding tiles before drawing conclusions.
• Speed tests measure the whole path. Plenty of them run over old Wi-Fi on tired laptops, which drags medians below what the line can actually do.
• It is not a test of your own connection. It is a record of other people's.

What to do with the answer

Use the number as a floor and a filter, not a verdict. If the tile shows a 15 Mbps median upload, treat gigabit-fiber claims at that address with suspicion until a provider gives you a written install commitment. If it shows 500 up and 500 down, fiber is almost certainly live nearby and worth chasing. If you are weighing two places, put them side by side with the compare tool, and if the official map disagrees with what you are seeing, the filed-versus-measured explainer covers why that happens so often.

Common questions