Four U.S. Airports Top Our List of Fastest Free Airport Wi-Fi

The COVID-19 pandemic upended a lot of travel plans and put our series on airport Wi-Fi on hold. We’re excited to get back in the swing of things in time for the summer travel season, and we have fresh data for you on Wi-Fi speeds at some of the busiest airports in the world during Q1 2022. Our analysis focuses on Wi-Fi over mobile connections on free Wi-Fi provided by the individual airports and Wi-Fi at selected airport lounges. The good news is that every airport surveyed met the recommended speed for streaming on mobile. However, there was a large divide between the fastest airports on the list and the slowest.

Speedtest Intelligence® showed four airports in the United States at the top of the list for free airport Wi-Fi. San Francisco International Airport showed a median download speed of 176.25 Mbps during Q1 2022, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport 171.01 Mbps, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport 113.64 Mbps, and Chicago O’Hare International Airport 85.49 Mbps. Dubai International Airport, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, and Los Angeles International Airport followed. All of these airports are international hubs that passengers from around the world pass through on their way to all kinds of destinations. Flyers waiting for connecting planes at these airports should have no trouble with internet speeds. In case of video calls, upload speeds are even faster than downloads at all of these airports, and San Francisco and SeaTac had the fastest uploads on the list. There is a wide gap in median speeds between the free airport Wi-Fi at Los Angeles International Airport and the rest of the airports on our list.

Denver International has their Wi-Fi split between two SSIDs that serve different spectrum bands, both of which showed median download speeds between 44 and 46 Mbps. Connecting to the 5 GHz “- DEN Airport Free WiFi” will get you a faster median upload speed than “DEN Airport Free WiFi 2.4.” Charles de Gaulle also has two different SSIDs for their free airport Wi-Fi though travelers can select either, “*WIFI-AIRPORT” had slightly faster median speeds than “WIFI-AIRPORT-STANDARD.”

Turkey’s Istanbul Airport was next on the list with a median download speed of 31.08 Mbps and a median upload speed of 23.80 Mbps. Spain’s Madrid Barajas Airport was the top of the bottom of our list with a median download speed of 19.76 Mbps over free airport Wi-Fi.

Four of the bottom five airports on our list were in China. Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport was faster than the other Chinese airports on the list with a median download speed of 14.69 Mbps. Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport and Beijing Capital International Airport were next on our list and showed nearly identical median download and upload speeds over free airport Wi-Fi. Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport showed slightly slower download and upload speeds than both. Mexico City International Airport in Mexico had the slowest median download and upload speeds over free airport Wi-Fi of any airport on this list.

Wi-Fi in airport lounges is often faster than free airport Wi-Fi

Free Wi-Fi is very nice to have for catching up on your life back home or reliving the glory of your vacation pics as you upload them to your social media accounts, but if you’re looking for the fastest Wi-Fi in an airport, you may want to look into other options. In many cases we found that airport lounges had faster Wi-Fi, like the United Club in Chicago and San Francisco which boasted median download speeds of 246.17 Mbps and 244.37 Mbps, respectively, during Q1 2022. The fastest club Wi-Fi download speed at LAX was at the Alaska Lounge (238.59 Mbps).

Outside the U.S., Wi-Fi speeds at airport lounges ranged dramatically. The following lounges all showed faster median download speeds than the free Wi-Fi at their respective airports during Q1 2022: the Plaza Premium Lounge in Dubai (148.96 Mbps), the Grand Lounge Elite in Mexico City (125.12 Mbps), Privium at Amsterdam’s Schiphol (121.05 Mbps), the Emirates Lounge at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle (93.31 Mbps), and the Sala VIP Puerta de Alcalá in Madrid (50.28 Mbps).

This stronger performance at airport lounges should be expected because it’s much easier to configure Wi-Fi over a small area like a single airport lounge than it is to serve an entire airport with multiple terminals. Patrons of airport lounges are also paying for the privilege, whether by the day or the year, so their expectations are higher. We did not always find this to be the case, however, so take a Speedtest® if you feel like you are not getting what you are paying for.

We were glad to see that travelers at all these airports have fast enough Wi-Fi to stream video on mobile and that there are other options available for those who need faster internet. Airports have had a lot to focus on in the last couple of years and Wi-Fi was not at the top of the list. We hope that will change as passenger volumes return to normal. If you’re traveling this summer, take a Speedtest at the airport to see how your experience compares.