Best NBN providers in Australia | 2026

How we chose the best NBN provider overall: Every year, our sister website WhistleOut announces its WhistleOut Awards winners. The awards are judged by scoring the best plans in various categories on month-by-month basis over a full financial year, with one, two, and three points available. By the end of 12 months, whichever provider has the most points in a given category wins. We name our Best NBN Provider Overall based on how many NBN-related categories a provider won in the WhistleOut Awards. In the case of a tie, we use the number of runner-up placements as an additional factor.

In the most recent WhistleOut Awards, Dodo took home an impressive four NBN-related titles: Best Everyday NBN Provider, Best Superfast NBN Provider, Best Fixed Wireless NBN Provider, and Best Internet Promotion (which the telco won for a deal on its NBN plans). As such, Dodo is a shoe-in this year as our pick for Best NBN Provider Overall.

This telco regularly offers great introductory discounts for new customers, but its standard post-deal pricing is also some of the cheapest around, no matter if you're looking for plans at the faster or slower end of the speed spectrum.

Dodo also regularly comes out well in the ACCC's Measuring Broadband Australia report, meaning its plans are more likely to get close to or exceed their maximum potential speeds for both downloads and uploads. That said, gamers might want to note the latest report showed Dodo's latency lagging a bit under 4ms behind the fastest option. This won't noticeably impact the vast majority of gamers, but the highly competitive crowd often wants to eek out every spare ms it can get.

How we chose the best NBN provider for value: We use the latest available ACCC data from the Measuring Broadband Australia program, which tracks NBN providers in real-world conditions based on a range of metrics, including speed. Because download speed is generally more important than upload speed for online tasks, we favour participating NBN providers that offer the highest percentages for download speeds during peak (busy, 7:00pm to 11:00pm) and off-peak hours. We also consider upload speeds, but weight them less heavily. It's also worth noting upload speeds are typically at least 10% below max attainable plan speeds, whereas download performance often reaches or exceeds 100% for anything NBN 500 and below.

Optus scored an impressive 102.3% for its average peak-time downloads in the latest ACCC report. This score might sound odd, but it's calculated vs. the maximum speed limit normally applied to a given plan's NBN speed tier. For example, an NBN 100 plan that performs at 100Mbps downloads would score 100%, but the same plan would score 102% if its average speed was 102Mbps.

Optus' average peak-time upload score was less impressive at 89.9%. But this is less than 2% below the top result, so is still pretty good, all things considered.

On top of fast speeds, Optus offers a couple of noteworthy perks to go along with its plans. First, you can get a free (if you stick around for 24 months) Gen 2 Ultra WiFi Modem. This modem router performed well in our testing, but if you leave within 24 months of signing up you'll have to pay Optus $12.75 per month remaining.

The second notable perk is access to Optus' SubHub service. SubHub lets you combine multiple subscription bills into a single monthly payment. Link two services to SubHub and get a 5% discount on that single bill. Link three and get a 10% discount.

The biggest downside of Optus' NBN plans is pricing. As one of the biggest names in the Australian telco landscape, Optus tends to charge more for its plans than many smaller companies do. And while the aforementioned perks are nice, they don't necessarily make up for simply signing up to a cheaper plan from a different provider.

While NBN providers are required to self-report typical evening download and upload speeds – between 7:00pm and 11:00pm daily when the internet is most in demand – we lean towards the ones who are part of the ACCC’s Measuring Broadband Australia program because it's from a disinterested third party. Below is a breakdown of the NBN service providers for which the ACCC can collect enough data to report on. The percentages represent average performance compared to the max wholesale speeds of a plan's given speed tier (e.g. NBN 100 is theoretically capped at 100Mbps downloads).

For an idea of pricing, you can compare NBN 500 plans from providers in the ACCC's measuring program below, ranked by introductory price for the first six months.  If you're after NBN 100, pricing is usually identical and the Go to Site button should still take you to the right place.

Unfortunately, we don't track Leaptel in our database, but we do compare the other nine providers.

How we chose the Best NBN provider for gaming: Primarily, the best NBN provider for gaming is determined by the one that has the lowest latency according to the ACCC – but we also consider ACCC-tracked download and upload speeds.

We've gone with dual winners here for a simple reason: Exetel only sells plans to people with an FTTP or HFC connection. If you have FTTN, FTTB or FTTC, you'll have to look elsewhere. And, in this case, that elsewhere should be Superloop.

We won't show off all the plans from both providers because that would be a pretty long list, so here's a look at some of the more popular speed tiers and how they compare:

As you can see, Exetel has just the one plan available. Aptly named the One Plan, this single offering is an NBN 500 product, meaning maximum potential downloads of 500Mbps and uploads of 50Mbps.

Exetel had the lowest latency during peak and off-peak hours by a decent margin. It also has the second-fastest uploads (only 0.3% behind the top spot) and scored above 100% for average download speeds.

It's worth noting Exetel still has legacy customers on various speed tiers and all fixed-line NBN technologies. As such, its ACCC results might not be as positively skewed as its current FTTP and HFC exclusivity might suggest.

Speaking of which, if you'd like to sign up to Exetel but are stuck on FTTN or FTTC, you might be able to apply for a free FTTP upgrade from NBN Co. There are already millions more premises eligible for the upgrade than have applied.

Superloop has a huge range of plans to suit a wide variety of needs. And it lets FTTN, FTTC and FTTB households sign up.

Granted, most of the better gamer-suited options are still for FTTP or HFC households only, but this limitation sadly exists for all plans on the market faster than NBN 100.

Even so, FTTP/HFC gamers might still want to consider Superloop's Creator nbn250/100 plan, which is a solid option for live streamers who have higher upload demands than most plans allow. This isn't a standard plan you'll see from other telcos, so it's worth considering if uploads are a key need.

Superloop is also one of the few providers to offer NBN 100/40, and one of only three telcos in our database to still have an NBN 2000 plan on its roster.

But it's not all good news. When you account for long-term standard pricing beyond any introductory discounts, Superloop's more common plans tend to be more expensive than others on the market. This is probably the telco's biggest drawback.

If you'd like to be your own judge, we've included the latency statistics from the ACCC below, as well as a comparison table of NBN 500 plans of each provider from the report (except for Leaptel, which we don't track) based on introductory pricing. If you're after NBN 100 instead, the cost is usually the same and the Go to Site link should still take you where you need to go.