Video Call Readiness Test
Whether your connection will hold up on a call — measured on the things that matter.
Run the test
Each sample is a real HTTP request to the nearest Cloudflare edge, with the response read in full. It is not an ICMP ping: it includes the server’s own handling time and stops at the edge rather than reaching any particular destination.
Where this comes from
Twenty timed requests are made to the nearest edge, a quarter of a second apart, and the results judged. The order of judgement is the part worth understanding, because it is the reverse of how these tools usually rank. Loss is checked first: a call losing 3% of its traffic is unpleasant at any speed, audio drops mid-word, and no buffer conceals it. Jitter comes second, because variable arrival is what makes a caller sound robotic — and the receiving end pays to smooth it out with delay. Absolute latency is checked last, since a steady 150 ms is a usable call while a wildly varying 60 ms is not.
What the results mean
- Jitter
- The mean change between consecutive samples. Deliberately not the standard deviation: a connection alternating 20 and 120 ms and one drifting slowly between them score alike on spread and feel completely different on a call.
- Loss
- Requests that did not complete. The single most damaging thing for real-time audio, and the one bandwidth cannot compensate for.
- 95th percentile
- The slow tail: 95% of requests were faster than this. A good median with a poor 95th is a connection that stutters.
- Limited by
- Which measurement produced the verdict, so the fix points at the right thing.
Common problems and fixes
- The numbers are good and calls are still bad
- Check upload bandwidth and what else is using it. This measures the timing of a small request; a group call needs sustained upload, and a backup running in the background will ruin one without touching the other.
- Jitter is high on Wi-Fi and fine on a cable
- That is the most common result in this whole category, and the cable is the answer. Wi-Fi jitter comes from interference and from sharing airtime with every other device.
- It is fine now and terrible every evening
- Congestion on a shared line. Run it at both times and keep the results — a provider takes a pattern more seriously than a description.
Frequently asked questions
What latency and jitter do video calls need?
Conferencing platforms generally treat under 150 ms of latency, under 30 ms of jitter and under 1% loss as good, with under 60 ms and under 10 ms of jitter as excellent. Loss matters most, jitter next, and absolute latency least — a steady 150 ms is a perfectly usable call, while 60 ms that swings by 80 ms is not.
Why is my ping fine but calls break up?
Because a single average hides the variation. A connection can average 30 ms and still deliver individual packets 200 ms late, which is exactly what a jitter buffer struggles with. This runs twenty samples and reports the variation rather than the average, which is why the numbers here can look worse than a speed test and describe your experience better.
Does this measure my internet speed?
No, and the distinction matters: latency and bandwidth are different things and fail independently. A gigabit line with high jitter is a bad call and a good download; a 20 Mbps line with steady latency is the opposite.
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