Verizon 5G Home Internet is “nothing fancy,” but it’s affordable and fast
8 min readWhile many people seem to hate their Wi-Fi, there’s a surprising love out there for Verizon 5G Home Internet. For the first time since I’ve started reviewing internet providers, customers weren’t rushing to tell me how much they hate their internet service.
This relatively new service—which runs over Verizon’s 5G cellular network—delivers solid speeds at fair prices (the 5G plans go up to 300Mbps and the 5G Home Plus plans go up to 1,000Mbps). Customers get a five-year lock on their monthly price, and they also get unlimited data without extra fees or annual contracts to worry about.
Customer satisfaction ratings are high across the board, too, further reinforcing the idea that Verizon 5G is a worthy alternative to older internet types like cable and DSL.
Guide to Verizon 5G Home Internet:
Share your experience and rate your internet provider
Your feedback helps others find the right internet provider. Whether your experience was great, frustrating, or somewhere in between, we want to hear about it.
Here's why you can trust us
At Reviews.org, our editorial team interviews customers and industry experts to better understand the firsthand experience of using internet services. We also look into the details of internet speeds, pricing, and more using proprietary data and public reports to help you make the best decision.
Our brand partners do not see or approve our articles before they are published, but we may make a commission if you click an affiliate link. To learn more, see our breakdown on how we test internet providers.
Our breakdown of Verizon 5G Home Internet features
For all our internet reviews, we give a rating based on three main criteria—speed and reliability, dollar value, and customer experience—which we then average to make an overall score.
How does Verizon 5G Home Internet do overall? See our full take below.
Overall score: 4.3/5
Speed and reliability
4.0/5.0
Verizon 5G Home Internet gets a lot of customers great speeds and a stable connection. But since it runs over a fixed wireless connection, the 5G speeds are much more likely to fluctuate. While Verizon speed tests knock it out of the park, the test includes Verizon's Fios service, so I’ve found that it’s hard to pin down exactly how fast Verizon 5G Home Internet is.
Verizon’s advertised download speeds are between 300Mbps and 1,000Mbps—an excellent range that more than covers home internet use. However, internet providers commonly fall short of their advertised speeds, especially over Wi-Fi connections. That said, Verizon places well in our Fastest Internet Providers report. While Verizon Fios outperforms 5G, our speed test results combine Verizon’s Fios fiber and 5G services, and it ranks among the fastest providers in the country.
Still, Verizon may have some issues with reliability for some customers. Because it’s wireless, a 5G internet connection isn’t as stable as fiber or cable, which both use physical lines to connect homes to internet infrastructures. With that tangible connection, a wired internet service is harder to interrupt than a wireless one. With Verizon 5G home internet, you’re more likely to experience slowdowns or even outages, especially in areas with weak cell service or during bad weather.
That said, many customers feel Verizon 5G Home Internet is reliable enough to meet their needs. According to the HighSpeedInternet 2023 customer satisfaction survey, 72% of Verizon’s 5G Home Internet customers reported “they ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ experience internet outages.” Customers I talked to gave positive reports, too. “It has been solid overall,” says Johnothy Michael, a Verizon 5G customer from Robinson, Illinois. Michael has never dealt with an outage on his service, and neither has customer Clare Messink in Salt Lake City.
Dollar value
4.5/5.0
Verizon 5G Home Internet offers a lot of bang for the buck, especially for students, low-income families, and other internet users on a budget. Unlike with many cable internet providers, you don’t pay for installation, data overages, or contract cancellation. There aren’t any data caps, and your flat monthly payment includes all equipment costs. You get a five-year price guarantee. Even if prices go up, you won’t feel it until after the first five years. And if you already have Verizon’s far-flung cell phone coverage, you can sign up for Verizon home internet for as little as $35 a month with AutoPay.
All of those perks come as part of a package that gives you truly solid speeds: 300Mbps download speeds are ideal for a small- or medium-sized household, while the gigabit max on the 5G Home Plus plan packs enough punch to support 10 or more Wi-Fi users.
Depending on when you sign up, you could get extra perks and deals on top of the plans that add Verizon home internet to Verizon cell phone service at a $25 discount. Some Verizon plans also allow you to add inexpensive add-ons, like streaming service trials and subscriptions to Apple Music and Google Play Pass. Make sure to check our Verizon 5G Home Internet deals guide that tracks all the newest bargains that you can (and should) get your hands on.
You could also lower your Verizon bill up to $30 a month if you qualify for Verizon's low-income internet plan.
To fee or not to fee
Verizon 5G doesn’t have installation, equipment, or overage fees, which is unusual in the internet industry. “Verizon is proud to provide customers with the best value and overall experience when using Verizon Home Internet,” a Verizon spokesperson tells us. “Transparency is key to a positive customer experience, so it's important that our pricing structure is clear and void of any hidden fees.”
There’s just one fee to look out for: If you cancel your service and don’t return your equipment, there’s a hefty non-return fee. (The exact amount depends on which devices you don’t return.)
Customer experience
4.5/5.0
“It’s a consistent product … I’ve had zero problems with it,” says Clare Messink, a Verizon 5G customer in Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s “nothing fancy,” she adds. “But I don't need fancy.”
The Verizon customer experience is better than the internet industry average. From the moment you sign up, Verizon makes things easy on the customer. “Installation was a snap—just take the gateway out of the box, plug it in, and go,” says Angelo Ilumba. Clare Messink says she hasn’t ever had to interact with customer service since she first got her gateway because she gets consistent speeds and never deals with outages.
One customer I spoke to via Reddit had an issue with Verizon customer service. He cites repeated issues with “improper billing,” which he’s never been able to resolve at one of Verizon’s brick-and-mortar stores. But Verizon generally gets excellent ratings for customer experience. HighSpeedInternet.com’s customer satisfaction survey ranks Verizon at second place among major internet providers in terms of overall satisfaction and for customer service. That puts Verizon only behind T-Mobile internet, another 5G internet provider.
Part of the enthusiasm may be due to the newness of 5G internet technology—customers may not have uncovered the bugs in Verizon and T-Mobile’s internet services or tech-support departments yet. But also it’s likely due to the high performance; half the Verizon customers I spoke with said they hardly interacted with customer service because their internet worked so well.
The 2024 American Consumer Satisfaction Index also gives Verizon 5G decent reviews. The survey gathers customer satisfaction information using a Likert model (rating something on a 1 to 5 scale). Verizon 5G Home Internet scored 74, three points above average for the internet industry.
How long it took to get a real human on the phone: I couldn’t reach a live human, probably because I’m not a customer and couldn’t provide a specific problem from the phone tree for assistance. (There’s no option for “I just want to know more about your 5G internet service.”) After three minutes and three rounds of circular robot communication, I gave up.
How the chat service is: The chat service wasn’t as convenient as I’d hoped. Rather than dealing with a robot or AI, I was connected right away to a live agent (hi, Nancy!), but she was slow to respond. There were two to three minutes between my messages and her answers. However, Nancy did have some helpful responses, not the pre-canned stuff you get from a chatbot.
Overall quality
4.3/5.0
Verizon 5G Home Internet gets some of the highest ratings out of all the internet providers we review, and for good reason. It’s fast, reliable, and offers a solid value. Go for it if you’re eager to get cheap, easy-to-setup Wi-Fi or want an alternative to a traditional cable internet plan.
What makes this review legit?
Our fact-based research process centers around interviews with internet customers from across the country, helping us understand how internet services hold up against diverse needs and challenges.
To compile this review, we spoke with four customers; parlayed with a brand spokesperson; reviewed the notes of a colleague who underwent the 30-day Verizon 5G Home Internet trial; spent countless hours looking for customers on Facebook and Reddit; and examined hard, cold numbers from research conducted by Reviews.org, HighSpeedInternet.com, and the American Consumer Survey Index.
Verizon 5G Home Internet vs. the competition
Verizon 5G Home Internet is a price MVP compared to top internet providers.
Only Spectrum can compete with Verizon’s prices, and Spectrum doesn’t have that sweet five-year price guarantee. According to Verizon customer and Redditor BarrelDregs, Spectrum doesn’t stand up against Verizon 5G: “I have Spectrum at my house. It’s terrible. It’s constantly getting worked on, and it always goes down during any storm with mild wind. So I’m glad I have my 5G device as a backup.”
Verizon also competes favorably in terms of download speed (its range is solidly in the middle), but it falls behind in upload speed. With Verizon 5G Home Internet, you can’t expect to get an upload speed above 50Mbps. That’s fine for most households—only serious content creators usually need a high upload speed. But Verizon doesn’t look great compared to Google Fiber's and AT&T's symmetrical speeds, plus Verizon’s own fiber offering, Fios. If you're considering a provider like Optimum with limited fiber availability, Verizon 5G is a solid alternative to Optimum cable.
Compare internet providers and prices
Offers and availability vary by location and are subject to change. Data verified as of the article's publication date.
*
w/ Auto Pay. Available in select areas.
†
Plus taxes and fees. Upload/download speed and device streaming claims are based on maximum wired speeds. Actual Internet speeds are not guaranteed and may vary based on factors such as hardware and software limitations, latency, packet loss, etc.
‡
Prices exclude taxes, surcharges, usage-based charges, certain equipment, and other fees or charges, which are subject to change.
^
w/ Auto Pay. Regulatory fees included in monthly price for qualified accounts. See full terms.
°
Price per month with Auto Pay & without select 5G mobile plans. Fios plan prices include taxes & fees
**
Limited time offer; subject to change; valid to qualified residential customers who have not subscribed to any services within the previous 30 days and who have no outstanding obligation to Charter.
††
Prices w/Auto Pay & Paperless Bill. Terms apply. Not available in all areas.
What do customers think of Verizon 5G Home Internet?
The three customers I spoke with were mostly positive about their experiences with Verizon 5G. Here's what these customers thought about Verizon home internet:
- Cheaper and more stable than T-Mobile 5G Home Internet
- Great for streaming and basic home use
- An affordable option that has caused zero problems
- Speeds are consistent for work-from-home setup
“I like how it gives us fast speeds without a video throttle cap, so we can watch 4K shows,” said Johnothy Michael, who works in IT and accounting in Robinson, Illinois. Michael previously had T-Mobile 5G Home Internet for a few years before switching to Verizon 5G in the summer of 2023.
“It was OK,” Michael said of T-Mobile, “but Verizon was cheaper on our phone bill each month and a more stable service.
“In comparison, T-Mobile Home Internet is always subject to deprioritization. Verizon is not,” he added, referring to T-Mobile’s policy of putting internet customers last.
“They have worked to offer high-quality home internet with priority data and speeds at a good price.” -Johnothy Michael
Clare Messink, a teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah, said she feels her Verizon 5G service is good but a little expensive at $50 a month with AutoPay—at least compared to what she’s used to. “I moved back to the States last June after being overseas for a long time,” she says. Home internet was a lot cheaper in Thailand and Argentina, where she previously lived.
“I sort of feel like, ‘Man, this should be $25 a month,’” Messink said. “But also the last time I paid for home internet in this country, it probably was $25 a month.”
Happily, Messink at least feels that she gets what she pays for. She doesn’t use her internet to play games online or work from home. She mostly uses it for streaming and basic home use, and her service works so well for those tasks that she’s never had to deal with a router blip, much less a full-scale outage. “It was an affordable option, and I've had zero problems with it,” she says.
“It’s nothing fancy—but I don't need fancy.” -Clare Messink
New Verizon 5G customer Angelo Ilumba had to replace his fiber service when he moved to rural California. Although he doesn’t get fast fiber speeds anymore, he’s still happy with his new setup. Ilumba works remotely as a writer, so he needs solid, fast internet service. So far, Verizon 5G has delivered. The plan’s download speed cap is supposed to be 300Mbps, and he often gets download speeds right in that range—and sometimes faster. “Speeds are pretty consistent,” he says.
“Installation was a snap.” -Angelo Ilumba, a customer in California
Neither Michael nor Messink had complaints about Verizon customer service. Messink says that because her 5G system is so reliable, she hasn’t communicated with Verizon since picking up her equipment. Ilumba hasn’t interacted with customer service at all—he signed up for Verizon 5G online, installed it himself when it arrived, and hasn’t had to worry about any technical issues ever since.
Need to contact Verizon 5G Home Internet customer service or tech support?
Try any of these routes:
- Call +1-800-837-4966
- Use the customer chat
- Try the Verizon Home Support FAQ
Want Verizon 5G Home Internet?
Verizon 5G Home Internet FAQ
Is Verizon 5G internet better than fiber?
No, Verizon 5G internet is not better than fiber. Verizon 5G uses wireless technology which is less stable than fiber, so 5G users will experience more slowdowns and outages. Fiber or fiber-to-the-home or premises (FTTH or FTTP) is the most reliable type of internet connection, and uses a physical fiber-optic cable that goes directly into your home.
Is Verizon 5G fast enough for streaming?
Yes, Verizon 5G Home offers up to 300Mbps download speed, which is fast enough for 1080p HD video streaming. The Verizon 5G Home Plus plan offers up to 1000Mbps, which is fast enough for Ultra HD 4K video streaming. You do need HD or 4K compatible devices and the quality of your streaming might be affected by internet speed and network congestion.
Is 5G worth it for home internet?
Yes, 5G is worth it for home internet, but it isn’t as stable or consistent as fiber or cable. For home use, 5G is worth it for its affordable price and simple set-up. If you can deal with variable speeds from time to time, then 5G is a fair option for home internet.
How fast is the Verizon 5G home internet?
Verizon 5G Home internet offers download speeds up to 300Mbps and upload speeds of 5–10Mbps. Typical download speeds are 85–300Mbps. The Verizon 5G Home plus plan offers up to 1Gig download speeds (1,000Mbps), with typical download speeds of 300–1,000Mbps. Upload speeds are 25–75Mbps.
Related Articles
An Honest CenturyLink Review, According to Customers
Are CenturyLink prices as good as they seem? We spill the beans on its Price...
An Honest Starlink Internet Review, According to Customers
Starlink is a good fit for rural customers but an instant no for those with...
Xfinity Internet Review: Customers Call It “Reasonable” and “Reliable”
Comcast Xfinity offers fast internet speeds at affordable prices. Our review digs into Xfinity’s pricing,...
Verizon Fios Internet Review: Customers Call It “Reliable” and “Smooth”
Verizon Fios is a fiber internet provider that offers top speeds, price guarantees, and high...
