The Best Broadband Internet for One Person Living Alone

Whether you’re a lone wolf, a young professional who is tired of having roommates, a college student moving out on their own for the first time or if any other number of reasons are true for why you live alone, then hopefully the below guide is helpful in finding the best internet service for you.

The good news is that if you don’t live in the absolute middle of nowhere, most internet service providers will likely provide a connection that is at least suitable for even some heavy use by one person.

Even if you’re streaming Twitch on your laptop, watching a 4K movie on your 80 inch HDTV, listening to music on your phone and downloading a new game on your PS4, you’ll still probably be alright.

Still, it’s worth ranking ISPs based on performance, and the below list should provide some guidance for those living by themselves.

Ranking the best internet for people living alone

Deals on internet for people living alone

If you’re looking specifically to save some money on internet because you know you won’t really be using that much, make sure you look for plans that probably range somewhere between 50 Mbps – 100 Mbps downloads. Those tend to be relatively cheaper these days given that average marketed speeds are pushing more toward 500 Mbps+ for “top tier” plans.

It’d be fairly difficult to use or even need that much bandwidth as one person casually using internet at home, so you can definitely look at the lower end of service plans.

The other thing to keep in mind is whether or not you need an included TV package. If you can get by on just internet with a few handpicked streaming services, you’ll be able to save hundreds of dollars a year on your internet package (related: best internet for streaming).

Many of the above ISPs might offer bundle deals, though, and those can be worth considering, especially if they don’t include some sort of long-term contract that has a hidden price increase.

How much internet does one person living alone need?

This is a great question and it depends on a number of things that we’ll break out below.

• For someone who is barely home who maybe likes to Facetime once in a while, might stream the occasional movie or TV show on Netflix or Hulu, or browses the internet on their phone before bed, it wouldn’t be super likely that you’ll need more than 25 Mbps speeds in your home connection.
• For someone who plans on watching a lot of content on streaming services, plays a lot of online video games (related: best internet for gamers), has YouTube constantly running, and is active on more than one device at a time, we’d recommend you look for a plan around 50 Mbps.
• For those who subscribe to a more “hardcore” approach to their internet use, maybe you work from home and are on Zoom calls all day, have Netflix or Hulu Live constantly running, and want your phone to download content at an absolutely blazing pace, then we’d suggest north of 100 Mbps.

Still, we highly doubt any single user needs much more than that for now. And while perhaps this changes in the future as things like home VR become more prevalent or maybe if you end up with other people in your household, you should be good if you fall into one of the above buckets.

How much data will one person use in a month?

The good news is it’ll be pretty tough for the average user to hit any sort of data cap living alone, BUT this is probably only true in the short term.

With how much data things like 4K video and video conferencing use, it is likely only a matter of time before monthly average usage increases to a point where more people are hitting the current ISP data caps that some of the major companies have put in place.

Most importantly though, the average single user uses somewhere between 100-150 GB per month, which means it’d be unlikely for you to hit the current data caps that range for somewhere between 300 GB – 1 TB.

It’s worth checking your monthly internet usage every couple of months to see what you’re currently using. Check with your ISP to get that number as they should be able to provide it for you.

Final thoughts on comparing internet for one person

At the end of the day, this whole process will be a balancing act of your specific needs. The things you’ll want to consider based on how important they are to you are probably some mix of the following:

• Price, monthly rates, and fees
• Whether or not there are any long-term contracts
• Average download and upload speeds
• Whether or not the ISP has a data cap

Weigh the above however you see fit and then make a decision based on how important each of the above is. That will give you a clear picture into what ISP you should consider.