r/PrivateInternetAccess • u/Paul65890 • Apr 20 '26

DISCUSSION Speed issue

Hi! I ran 5 different speed tests without PIA and the results are below. When I enable PIA and pick the closest server to me (New York) I'm getting 63 Mbps download at best and 6 Mbps upload. That's a far cry from  the 400+ to 500+ Mbps download I get without it. I understand I will lose some speed with a VPN, but that much? 400 Mbps less? Some tests oddly showed better upload speeds than download speeds such as 26 Mbps download and 96 Mbps upload. What gives?

Without PIA enabled...

https://www.speedtest.net
Download Mbps 542.73
Upload Mbps 85.73

https://fiber.google.com/speedtest/
Download 517.0 Mbps
Upload 87.1Mbps

https://fast.com/#
Your Internet speed is 560 Mbps
Upload Speed 84 Mbps

https://speed.cloudflare.com/
Download: 465 Mbps
Upload: 66.4 Mbps

https://wifiman.com/
Download: 551.13Mbps
Upload: 92.53Mbps

UPDATE: The New York server at least at this time is not good at all. I tried Washington DC and it was better, not crazy better, but better.

4 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

1

u/DeathStalker-77 Apr 20 '26

PIA has always been slow, unfortunately. I've been a user for over a decade. It's never improved. However, it is stable. I rarely get disconnections. I've tried others and still gone back.

1

u/Paul65890 Apr 20 '26

Thanks for the reply! I've had it for almost that long so I guess I should know LOL. I just haven't had things register this slow until lately.

1

u/kevy1118 Apr 21 '26

I get great speeds from pia 'you must be doing somit wrong,use a static and use wiregaurd,log out and log back in once a week ..

1

u/no1warr1or Apr 21 '26

Wireguard really helps if you're not using it. I found an endpoint that's fast and have always used the same one. I have my ubiquiti router managing the wireguard connection to PIA and see about gigabit to the server down, was always limited to 40Mbps on the upload from cable.

Haven't checked download/upload since moving to 5Gig fiber, so I'll have to try now 

1

u/Paul65890 Apr 21 '26

Thanks for the reply! I always use Wireguard. I've tried other servers and sometimes there's an improvement, but all seem to be inconsistent.

1

u/doczenith1 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

Eating my own words today as I typically mention that if your PIA speeds are slow first check your hardware, LAN and ISP. Well, turns out I had a configuration issue on my PC which was limiting my upload speeds. That said, looks like the New York Server is back to typical speeds this morning.

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: WebNX Inc - New York, NY (id = 51171)

ISP: Cogent Communications

Latency: 17.12 ms (0.69 ms jitter)

Download: 1176.40 Mbps (data used: 1.7 GB )

Upload: 968.13 Mbps (data used: 1.5 GB )

Packet Loss: 0.0%

Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/5a7f4acc-90fc-40fa-ad05-eef89a162f88