How Starlink Works, What It Costs and Who It Is For

Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet service. An antenna at the customer's location, usually called the dish, exchanges radio signals with satellites a few hundred kilometers overhead. Those satellites pass the traffic to ground stations or to one another. In the United States, home plans were listed at $55 to $130 a month on October 6, 2026. The service fits best where cable and fiber do not reach.

How does Starlink work?

Older satellite internet relies on single spacecraft in geostationary orbit, 35,786 km up. Starlink's technology page puts the resulting delay, known as latency, at more than 600 milliseconds. Starlink instead uses thousands of satellites at about 550 km. The company says that brings latency down to around 25 milliseconds. By comparison, Ookla's Speedtest data put Starlink's median U.S. latency at 39 milliseconds in the first quarter of 2026.

A SpaceX space safety update, read on October 6, 2026, says the company operates more than 11,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit.

Each satellite carries phased-array antennas, which steer radio beams electronically. It also carries laser links to other satellites, so data can travel through space before coming down. According to SpaceX, a dish in the United States has tens of satellites in view and switches between them many times a minute.

Distance to the ground network matters. Ookla measured median Starlink latency of 109 milliseconds in Hawaii in the second half of 2025. It attributed that to the longer route to a ground station and data center.

SpaceX says it deployed the first 26 of its next-generation V3 satellites at the end of September 2026. It says each is designed for about 10 times the downlink capacity of a V2 satellite.

How does Starlink work in bad weather?

SpaceX's support guidance says the hardware is built and tested to cope with heavy rain, hail, sleet, snow and extreme heat. It says the hardware is rated to operate outdoors from -30 to 50 degrees Celsius. The dish can melt snow that settles on it.

The company acknowledges limits: heavy rain or wind can slow the connection or, rarely, cause an outage. The equipment is not designed for hurricanes or tornadoes. SpaceX advises against adding protective covers because they degrade performance. These are the company's own statements, not independent test results.

Obstructions are a separate issue. SpaceX says that when a tree or building blocks one satellite, the dish usually switches to another unnoticed. It also says the Starlink app can check a site for obstructions before installation.

How much does Starlink cost?

Monthly prices on Starlink's U.S. service plans page, checked on October 6, 2026:

• Residential 100 Mbps: $55
• Residential 200 Mbps: $85
• Residential Max: $130
• Roam, for portable use: $55 for 100 GB, $80 for 300 GB, or $175 for unlimited data

All three home plans are advertised with unlimited data. The two cheaper tiers cap download speeds and are sold only in select areas. Starlink's fine print says the quoted speeds are the maximum available, carry no guarantee and drop when the network is congested. On hardware, the U.S. residential page advertises no upfront cost in select areas, along with a 30-day trial.

Prices differ by country. On the same day, Starlink's United Kingdom page listed the three home tiers at £40, £60 and £80 a month. Its Kenya page listed two home plans, Residential Lite and Residential, at KES 4,000 and KES 6,500 a month.

Who is Starlink for?

Speed-test data show a service that has improved quickly but often falls short of the federal broadband benchmark. Ookla analyzed tests run by Speedtest users. It found median Starlink download speeds of 100 Mbps or more in every U.S. state except Alaska in the second half of 2025. Yet fewer than half of those users, 44.7%, met the Federal Communications Commission's minimum broadband standard in the fourth quarter of 2025. That standard is 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. The share was up from 17.4% in the first quarter. Uploads are the weaker side: median upload speeds reached 20 Mbps in 22 states.

That profile suits rural and remote homes with no cable or fiber. In the first quarter of 2026, Ookla recorded a median download speed of 127.39 Mbps for Starlink. That compares with 48.55 Mbps for Hughesnet and 41.05 Mbps for Viasat, the two main geostationary providers in the United States. The profile also suits RV owners, campers and people working on the go, the stated market for Roam plans.

Ookla notes that Starlink reported more than 10 million active subscribers worldwide by February 2026. That was up from a reported 4.6 million at the end of 2024. Amazon's rival Leo constellation is far smaller. The Verge reported on September 28, 2026 that it had launched 396 satellites.

The bottom line

Starlink flies many satellites close to Earth, which cuts the delay that held back earlier satellite internet. Cost depends on the country, the plan and the area. The official page for a given address is the place to check. The speed data suggest it is strongest where wired broadband is slow or missing.