Contract, availability, speed: how Germany's internet providers will fare in 2025

Based on almost 25 million measurements from over 1,000 mini-computers and around 87,000 speed tests, a comprehensive picture of contract fulfillment, stability and speed in the German Internet market has emerged. As the quality leader for Internet provider tests, CHIP and NET CHECK are thus setting the bar even higher than before. 

Deutsche Telekom wins the overall standings

In this year's test, Deutsche Telekom came out on top against the three other national providers Vodafone, 1&1 and O2. In the key categories of contract fulfillment and network availability, Deutsche Telekom achieved top marks as it is more reliable and delivers better performance than the competition for many of the connections measured - sometimes even more than contractually promised. The company offers the most stable connections among the providers tested. 31% of Telekom connections recorded a maximum of one short-term outage per month during the entire test period - a peak value in comparison. This figure was only 14.5% for O2, which came last.

Regional providers on the rise

Regional fiber optic providers are also gaining in importance. Deutsche Glasfaser wins the test in five federal states, TNG wins in Hesse and wilhelm.tel in Schleswig-Holstein. Cable provider Pyur comes out on top in Berlin and Saxony and impresses with the most attractive price-performance ratio of all providers.

How it was tested

The evaluation is based on two large data sources: Around 1,000 mini computers based on Raspberry Pi tested the connection quality of German households in real operation over a period of months. In addition, tens of thousands of speed tests from CHIP.de and crowd data from more than one million app users were included in the analysis. Among other things, the contract compliance for download and upload speeds, the availability of the connection and the duration and frequency of outages were evaluated.

Technology at the limit: VDSL reaches its limits

The results show that DSL connections reach their technical limits at high bandwidths. This is particularly evident in the 100 and 250 Mbit/s tariffs. Here, the actual measured speed is clearly below the providers' download promise. Cable and fiber optic connections perform significantly better here. This is also reflected in the contract fulfillment, where Vodafone cable scores with up to 99% compared to the maximum download speed for 100 Mbit/s connections (measured on the mini-computers).

Gaining stability and transparency

Our test provides consumers with a guide for choosing the right internet provider. In addition to speed, stability is particularly important these days - especially when working from home or streaming. If you want to avoid frequent outages, you should take a close look at how the provider performed in the test,“

All test details and results can be found on CHIP.de.