Best Broadband in Singapore For Your Household Needs: Singtel vs M1 vs StarHub vs MyRepublic & More

Life without the Internet would be unimaginable.

What would you be doing at home right now without a broadband plan?

You wouldn’t be able to catch Squid Game on Netflix, order food delivery, or work from home.

Plus, with so many devices connected to your WiFi at home, to the point that your family members start quarrelling over who hogged the bandwidth, it is a good idea to have a strong broadband connection and an appropriate router.

So we’ve compiled the best broadbands to solve your connectivity woes!

TL;DR: Home Broadband Singapore Guide — Broadband Promotion, Prices and More

SIMBA has entered the broadband space and most providers are no longer offering under 1Gbps plans. Prices have also been adjusted up slightly due to the GST increase at the start of 2024.

Cheapest No-Frills Broadband in Singapore:
SIMBA’s 2.5Gbps 3 or 12-month Broadband Plan (no router) at $20/month

For Regular Home Broadband Users:

M1’s 24-month 500Mbps Broadband Plan (no router) at $30.45/month

OR

StarHub’s 24-month 1Gbps Broadband Plan (no router) at $38.24/month

OR

M1’s 24-month 1Gbps Broadband Plan at $40.65/month

For Gamers:
MyRepublic’s 24-month 2 x 1Gbps Gamer Broadband Plan (no router) at $50.99/month

For Owners of Multi-level Homes
StarHub’s 24-month 10Gbps Broadband Plan with Mesh at $69.95/month

For The Commitment Phobic:
Starhub’s 1Gbps No Contract Broadband Plan (no router) at $55.93/month

Jump To:

• Identifying The Best Broadband Plan For Your Household’s Needs
• Cheapest Broadband in Singapore
• Broadband Plan Recommendations
• How Much is Broadband in Singapore?
• Fibre Broadband Set-up Fees
• Broadband Hidden Costs To Look Out for
• Fastest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Singapore

Identifying The Best Fibre Broadband Plan For Your Household’s Needs

When it comes to broadband plans, choosing the right bandwidth (Mbps/Gbps) and service provider for your household needs is key, especially when the most value-for-money plans lock you in a 24-month contract.

Before you pick a broadband plan, it’d be best to consider the needs of your household.

Are you living in a large home with many devices connected to the internet?

Or perhaps you have a gamer or two in your family that requires low latency connections for gaming?

Multiple Devices Causing Lag

If you live in a large household, you’ll probably have felt the effects of WiFi lag when multiple devices are connected to your router at once. 

Even if you have the best internet speed and a 10Gbps broadband plan, all will be for nought if you have a lousy router that creates a bottleneck for your devices.

With WiFi 6 becoming the new standard, most modern broadband plans should give you a pretty seamless experience. If you live in a larger home, you should also consider a WiFi Mesh system to cover up dead zones in the house.

While many plans come bundled with routers, you should not be using them as a base to choose your ISP! Instead, the best option is to get your own (better) router and choose a plan without a router. 

Now that you know what to look out for, let’s dive into some of the cheapest and most value-for-money broadband plans!

Cheapest Broadband in Singapore

Just want the cheapest? 

SIMBA’s 2.5Gbps 3 or 12-month Broadband Plan (no router) at $20/month would be the cheapest broadband in Singapore! 

While 2.5Gbps sounds very attractive, do NOT be fooled by the bigger numbers as most households realistically only need 1Gbps at the maximum. What’s more important is the internet speed and latency.

As SIMBA is brand new in the broadband space, we can’t attest to their network speeds. Some user tests have also shown that SIMBA’s latency isn’t very good, so you get what you pay for.

For Regular Home Broadband Users (For 3 – 6 pax)

Based on our research through countless forums and discussion posts, M1 or Starhub plans are the best choice when it comes to price and reliability. 

If you are in a 3-person household, go for M1’s 24-month 500Mbps Broadband Plan (no router) at $30.45/month.

If you require a bit more bandwidth for multiple users, we recommend StarHub’s 24-month 1Gbps Broadband Plan (no router) at $38.24/month. 

While we do recommend getting your own router as they are often better than what telcos include in their bundles, you could also go for M1’s 24-month 1Gbps Broadband Plan at $40.65/month, if you are too lazy to get a router yourself.

For Gamers (1 – 2 gamers)

Need the lowest latency possible for those sweaty in-game moments? A gamer-focused fibre broadband plan will be best for you.

These plans typically include custom networking routing to ensure the lowest pings when making your MLG plays. MyRepublic’s 24-month 2 x 1Gbps Gamer Broadband Plan (no router) at $50.99/month is our preferred choice with lower pings to most server locations. 

For Owners of Multi-level Homes

Living in a Good Class Bungalow (GCB) and needing full Wi-Fi coverage for your entire home? You can consider StarHub’s 24-month 10Gbps Broadband Plan with Mesh at $69.95/month.

These bundles typically come with multiple units that extend your Wi-Fi coverage, ensuring that your entire house has a strong signal. 

For The Commitment Phobic

If being tied down for a year or two isn’t your cup of tea, you can go for a no-contract plan which gives you the freedom to switch whenever you’d like.

Currently, only MyRepublic, Starhub and ViewQwest offer a no-contract plan and the cheapest of the three is Starhub’s 1Gbps No Contract Broadband Plan at $55.93/month.

You’ll also need to factor in the cost of buying your own router.

How Much Is Broadband in Singapore?

All plans listed here come with a WiFi 6 router unless otherwise stated:

Note that information is valid as of 13 February 2024 and that prices and promotions for these plans can be changed without prior notice. There are other initial set up fees that you need to take note of.

Fibre Broadband Set-up Fees

Do note that all service providers depend on a company called NetLink Trust to set up your fibre broadband.

The usual fees associated with setting up your fibre broadband include:

• NetLink Trust Fibre Termination Point installation fee (includes the first 15 meters of optical fibre): $163.50 (high-rise), $294.30 (landed)
• NetLink Trust Service Activation Charge: $57.77 per port activation
• Optical Network Terminal (ONT) Activation (installation) Charge: $91.68 or $147.70 (weekend depending on your ISP)
• Fibre Wiring/Registration/Consultation Charge: $54.50
• And more depending on the service provider and size of your home.

Depending on your plan, some of these fees such as Service Activation Fees and ONT Activation fees are waived.

Be sure to read the fine print and make sure that you know of any extra costs to avoid shock.

Broadband Hidden Costs To Look Out for

This is similar to how telcos tag a premium to their contract plans by packaging the price of a handset with the mobile service.

A common cost that you want to look out for when choosing a home fibre broadband plan is the cost of the router.

It’s usually bundled with the package you sign up for.

But if you have a specific router in mind, it might cost a little extra to get it from your ISP.

Best Internet Service Provider: Which Is the Fastest Broadband in Singapore?

Bandwidth vs Internet Speed: is 1Gbps Enough Singapore

Many Singaporeans often confuse bandwidth with internet speed.

To be clear, bandwidth refers to the maximum capacity of a wired or wireless communications link to transmit data over a network connection in a given amount of time. This does NOT mean that your internet speed will be a steady 1Gbps if you sign up for a 1Gbps plan. It only means that you can receive up to 1 GB per second.

While 1Gbps broadband plans are the most common plans, did you know that you might not need this much bandwidth?

You might even be able to save a hundred plus dollars a year when you opt for a 500Mbps plan instead…

So if you’re looking to reduce your bills and amp up your savings rate, why not consider it as well?

Internet Speed

Since bandwidths are not really the issue here, let’s look at the more important benchmark:

Internet Download/Upload Speeds

Do note that ViewQwest has the lowest test count, which may skew results a little.

According to Speedtest by Ookla, ViewQwest has the fastest median download and upload speed in the first half of 2022.

However, do not base your decision solely on this; things might have changed since then, and your download speed will also vary. One ViewQwest broadband user will not have the same download or upload speed as another.

Latency

Another important metric is latency. Ever had two live streams on at one time and realised that one is faster than the other? That’s the difference in latency, or the “delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction for its transfer.

Latency, commonly known as ping among gamers, is probably the most important for gaming. If you have a 300ms ping for example, the total time taken for you to react to something that happens on your screen would be your ping + your human reaction time + any monitor lag. Thus, having your ping as low as you can will help you to be more competitive in gaming.

For the non-gamer, latency will affect things like internet TV, YouTube live streams, and basically anything that you want to watch “live”. If you don’t mind being a couple of seconds late to what is being broadcast in real-time, latency shouldn’t be a concern to you. 

Latency/ping is a rather weird subject as I can be on Singtel for example and ping a server in Japan for 150ms while a server in the US will probably get me 300ms. Meanwhile, M1 for example could get me 200ms in Japan (worse than Singtel) and 200ms in the U.S. (better than Singtel). This means that if you play a particular game, you will want to know how an ISP does their routing to have a good ping to whatever server your game is on. 

That said, as a gamer myself, it has long been known in the community that MyRepublic offers custom routing with often the lowest latency/ping to most server locations. Recently, there have also been user-run tests on HardWareZone that double confirms this:

Which Is the Best Home Broadband Provider in Singapore? Which Wi-Fi Broadband Is Best?

Too many options and still can’t decide?

We’ve decided to help you make that decision by giving you access to real user reviews of broadband plans left by our awesome Seedly Community.

This way, you can take the price comparison that we did and use the SeedlyCommunity’s reviews to confirm your decision.

Think that your current home fibre broadband plan sucks?

Why not leave a review to stop others from making the same mistake you did?

Compare the Best Broadband Plans

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