How we determine internet availability
Every availability percentage and price on this site traces to a public filing, a provider's own published data, or a verified partner submission. Here is exactly how it works — including the limits.
Where availability percentages come from
The "% available" badges on provider cards come from the FCC's Broadband Data Collection (BDC) — the federal dataset in which every internet provider must report, location by location, where it offers service. For each city we cover, we compute the share of serviceable locations in its county that a provider reports serving. The FCC refreshes this data roughly twice a year, and we regenerate our numbers from each refresh.
A percentage is a coverage estimate, not a promise about your address. County-level data can hide street-level gaps — especially in rural areas — which is why every page reminds you to confirm service with the provider before ordering.
Verified provider data comes first
Internet providers can claim their listing through our partner portal. Once verified, a provider can upload its actual service area and current plans. Verified uploads override our modeled coverage in address search results — the provider knows its network better than any federal filing does. Listings with provider-submitted plans are marked verified on their pages.
How results are ranked
City pages use a fixed sort: connection technology first (fiber, then cable, then fixed wireless, then DSL, then satellite), then top speed, then price. Address search adds one factor ahead of those: how confident we are that a provider actually covers the point you searched — verified provider uploads rank above modeled coverage, which ranks above satellite-anywhere fallbacks. None of these signals can be influenced by payment: no provider can pay for placement, and no "sponsored" slots exist anywhere on the site.
Why we don't show star ratings
We don't have real customer-review data yet — so we don't show ratings. When a number would be invented, we leave it out. The same rule drives the availability badges: if we have no FCC data for a provider in a city, the badge is simply absent rather than estimated.
Where pricing comes from
Plan speeds and prices are encoded only from providers' official websites, and we distinguish introductory from ongoing prices wherever the provider publishes both. Some carriers price the same plan differently by city; where we know that, the listing says so. Prices change faster than any database — treat ours as a starting point, not a quote.
Known limitations
- County-level granularity: a provider serving 60% of a county may serve 0% of your street. Address-level precision is in progress.
- FCC filings tend to over-report rural coverage; where a verified provider upload exists, we use it instead.
- Plans and promotions change between FCC refreshes and our data updates.
Questions about our data, or a correction? Providers can claim their listing here.