Mbps Vs MB/s: What do these speeds mean?

Understanding megabit per second rates is critical to gauging the quality of your home internet speed. Typically, download speeds severely outpace upload speeds. The FCC, for instance, lists 100 Mbps as the threshold for broadband internet speed, while the requirement for uploading information is merely 20 Mbps.  According to a report by internet speed test company Ookla, the median download and upload speeds for American households in August 2026 was 307 Mbps and 63 Mbps, respectively. These average speeds have skyrocketed over the past decade. In 2015, for instance, the FCC's benchmarks for highspeed internet were four times slower than their current standards. If your internet connection continues to perform middlingly, you can potentially boost your Mbps through a few simple fixes.

Megabytes per second, on the other hand, is typically used to describe the speed of a large data transfer to and from a storage device. For instance, you may use the measure to describe how fast a file can be uploaded to the cloud, or how quickly it can be moved from a hard disk.  Using megabytes per second, you can easily quantify how long it will take you to download a video file or transfer a document.

Of course, you may see the two metrics used interchangeably. Luckily, comparing the two metrics is simple: just divide your megabits by eight. For instance, if your internet says that it can upload a file at 100 Mbps, that equates to 12.5 MBps. Conversely, to convert MBps to Mbps simply multiply by 8.