What is the best internet provider in San Francisco?
San Francisco may be the city of cable cars and diverse cultures, but it also has lightning-fast internet speeds and cheap deals from ISPs.Sonic is CNET’s pick for the best internet service provider in San Francisco. It’s the best internet option for most households because you can fast speed starting at just $50 a month.If Sonic isn’t available in your area or you just want to explore more plans, AT&T Fiber, Verizon 5G Home Internet and Xfinity are all solid alternatives, depending on which ISP is available at your address.
Looking for the lowest-priced plans in the area? Xfinity and Astound Broadband tie for the cheapest internet service in San Francisco, both starting at $20 per month. Astound offers the better value — especially since San Fran residents can currently choose any speed between 300 megabits per second and 1,500Mbps, and pay only $20 under Astound’s network.
If you’re hunting for the fastest speeds in the city, you can get speeds of up to 10,000Mbps, which Sonic offers for $50 per month. AT&T Fiber also offers multi-gigabit plans in the Bay Area but speeds max out at 5,000Mbps. If that is more speed than you need, consider Xfinity’s 1,200Mbps plan for $75 a month.
Google Fiber Webpass: None of the Bay Area metros are Google Fiber cities. For that, you’ll need to head south to Orange County. San Francisco and Oakland are home to scores of buildings equipped with Google Fiber Webpass. This fixed wireless service uses antennas to send a high-speed signal to multi-dwelling buildings like apartment complexes. Speeds up to a gigabit are possible at some addresses for a flat rate of $70 per month or $63 for a yearly plan.
Monkeybrains: Monkeybrains is a local provider of fixed wireless internet services operating in San Francisco since 1998. When you sign up, the company will install an antenna on the roof of your building and run an Ethernet cable into your home — plug in a router, and voila, internet access. Your speeds will depend on the strength of the signal at your address, and you shouldn’t expect anything blazing fast: advertised speeds range between 20 and 50Mbps. At a flat rate of $35 per month, Monkeybrains might be worth a call if nothing else is available.
Raw Bandwidth Communications: Raw Bandwidth utilizes a mix of internet technologies to get businesses and residential addresses online and even offers private line service with up to gigabit speeds. Residential service is available in much of San Francisco and surrounding areas, but most homes in that coverage map will have to settle for DSL or even dial-up service, making this an outdated option for Bay Area residents. Speeds won’t get any faster than 100Mbps under the best circumstances and will likely be much lower. Still, with no data caps and no prescheduled price increases, Raw Bandwidth might be a good fit for homes requiring basic connectivity for checking email and light browsing.
Unwired: Unwired is another local fixed wireless internet provider, advertising services for residents, business owners and people on the move. The service starts at $55 a month but shoots up to $145 a month. Unwired doesn’t advertise speeds on their website, but users report getting between 6 and 70Mbps on various plans, which isn’t exactly a great value or technically an internet connection, according to the FCC. Still, if you’re on the move or you’re looking for a temporary internet service, Unwired might be just the thing for you.
Satellite internet: Satellite internet from Hughesnet or Viasat is available pretty much anywhere. Still, you shouldn’t expect fast speeds, low latency or value since satellite internet often comes with steep equipment costs, tight data caps and long-term service contracts. Starlink, the satellite internet service from SpaceX and Elon Musk, is your third option. It doesn’t offer the same universal availability as Hughesnet or Viasat and costs $120 per month, plus $349 for the equipment.
T-Mobile Home Internet: For $50 to $70 per month, T-Mobile can connect eligible addresses to the internet over the same wireless airwaves used for mobile connections, including 5G airwaves. The service offers better overall availability than Verizon since it leans on 4G/LTE airwaves as well, but that also means that average speeds are slower, with downloads ranging from 87 to 415Mbps and uploads ranging from 14 to 55Mbps. There are no data caps or contracts with T-Mobile, so it’s an appealing option for rural customers in the coverage map without access to faster fiber or cable plans.
Cheap internet options in San Francisco
If you’re trying to keep your internet bill as low as possible, you won’t need to spend much more than $50 per month with any of San Francisco’s top providers. With Xfinity, available just about everywhere, the cheapest plan available nets you download speeds of up to 150Mbps and upload speeds of up to 100Mbps for just $20 per month during the promo period. Astound Broadband also offers any of its tiers for $20 per month, granting you download speeds up to 1,500Mbps.
What is the cheapest internet plan in San Francisco?
Yes. AT&T is the largest fiber internet provider in the area, with a fiber footprint covering more than a million locations. That includes multi-gig speeds of up to 5Gbps, which AT&T says are available at roughly one-third of fiber-eligible addresses in the area. Sonic offers fiber internet service at select locations in San Francisco too. Similar to AT&T, most of Sonic’s coverage map consists of slower DSL connections.
The San Francisco Bay Area boasts a fairly wide range of internet providers, including fiber plans from AT&T and Sonic, cable plans from Comcast Xfinity and Astound Broadband, and fixed wireless service over 5G and 4G/LTE airwaves from Verizon and T-Mobile. Speeds vary by provider, plan and in some cases, by address, but most homes will have access to gigabit-or-better speeds from one provider or another. At some addresses, AT&T Fiber multi-gig speeds as high as 5 gigabits per second may be an option, and Sonic claims to offer fiber speeds of up to 10Gbps, but speeds like those aren’t available everywhere yet.
No. Google doesn’t offer fiber internet service anywhere in the Bay Area. The company offers its Google Fiber Webpass service at select San Francisco and Oakland locations. Instead of a direct fiber connection, Webpass buildings use a special antenna to receive a high-speed internet signal over the air, with speeds up to a gigabit available in some instances.
