Jitter Test: How Steady Is Your Ping?

The test below is already running. Jitter is the middle number: how much your ping varies from one moment to the next.

Detecting…

-- ms

Current: -- ms

-- ms

Current: -- ms

-- %

(0 lost / 0 sent)

Measuring…

The verdict appears after a few seconds of measurement.

Comparing with other tests to this server…

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Recent Test History

Date & Time	Duration	Avg Ping	Avg Jitter	Packet Loss	Actions

What jitter is

Jitter is the variation in your ping. A line at a steady 40 ms has almost none; a line that jumps between 20 and 80 ms has a lot, even though its average looks fine.

Games and voice calls send small packets at a fixed rhythm and expect them to arrive in the same rhythm. When the spacing varies, a game has to guess where other players are, and a call has to stretch or cut audio. That is the stutter, rubber-banding and robotic voice people describe. This test measures jitter as the standard deviation of the round-trip times in each second, averaged over the test.

What the number means

Under 5 ms

Very steady. Nothing you will notice in a game or a call.

5 to 30 ms

Under 10 ms is fine for most uses. Above that, fast games feel uneven and voice can break up. In a 128-tick shooter even 8 ms is already a full server tick.

Over 30 ms

Unsteady. Expect choppy calls and rubber-banding. Find the cause before anything else.

Finding the cause

1. Wi-Fi

The most common cause. Run the test once on a cable. If jitter drops, the wireless link is the problem: use the 5 GHz band, move closer to the router, or stay on the cable.

2. A busy line

Downloads and streams on the same line make every packet wait in the router's queue for a different time. Pause them and test again. The bufferbloat test measures this directly.

3. Your provider

High jitter on a cable with nothing else running, especially in the evening, points to congestion at your provider. Let the test run during the bad hour and keep the report.

Jitter and your game

How much jitter a game tolerates depends on how often its server updates. At 128 updates per second (Valorant) the server ticks every 7.8 ms; at 20 (Apex Legends) every 50 ms. Jitter above one tick means your inputs land in unpredictable ticks. Pick your game in the field above, or open its test page, and the verdict uses that game's limits.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good jitter value?

Under 5 ms is very good, under 10 ms is fine for games and calls. Between 10 and 30 ms, voice starts to sound choppy and fast games feel uneven. Above 30 ms both suffer.

What causes high jitter?

Most often Wi-Fi, a busy line at home (bufferbloat) or congestion at the provider in the evening. A test on a cable with downloads paused tells you which one.

Is jitter worse than high ping?

For games and calls, often yes. A steady delay can be compensated for; a delay that changes with every packet cannot. That is why a game feels worse at 30 ms with high jitter than at 70 ms without.

How is jitter measured here?

As the standard deviation of the round-trip times within each one-second window, averaged over the test. Fixed windows mean the same line shows the same jitter at any tick rate. The methodology page has the details.

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