Internet connection benchmarking firm nPerf has this morning published the results from their annual 2025 crowdsourced study into UK mobile broadband (4G, 5G) performance, which sees EE being named as the country’s best and fastest operator for mobile data performance. But Three UK still holds the top spot for 5G-only performance.
The latest nPerf study is based on 91,281 tests carried out – between January and December 2024 – exclusively by end-customers of the various mobile network operators, using tools on both nPerf’s website and via their dedicated mobile testing apps for Android and iOS. The results are said to reflect “users in real conditions” from across the United Kingdom.
However, there are caveats to this sort of data, such as the fact that it could be impacted by any limitations of the devices being used, and it hampers the ability to adopt a common type of hardware in order to establish a solid baseline of performance. But those caveats are shared by all operators in the study.
Overall, EE came top for mobile broadband upload speeds (16.03Mbps), web browsing performance, latency (36.14ms) and YouTube video streaming, which dethroned Three UK from the top spot of last year’s nPerf study. But Three UK remained the fastest for both overall download speeds (111.49Mbps) and also almost across the board for 5G-only connections. Sadly, O2 (Virgin Media) found themselves at the bottom of the study, again.
