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Wi Fi Throughput Estimate Calculator

Work out wi fi throughput estimate instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Wi Fi Throughput Estimate Calculator

Advertised Wi-Fi rates are PHY rates for a single ideal link. Real throughput is roughly half, because CSMA/CA contention, preambles, inter-frame spacing and acknowledgements all consume airtime. That half is then shared among every client on the radio, which is why per-client throughput in a busy room is a small fraction of the headline figure.

Formula

Wi-Fi throughput

PHY rate ~ per-stream rate x streams x (width / 20); realistic aggregate ~ 0.5 x PHY; per client = aggregate / clients

Worked example

With the default values below, Wi Fi Throughput Estimate Calculator returns Throughput per client of 30.1. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Wi-Fi standardone of 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4), 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6), 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7)
802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6)
Channel widthaccepts 20–320 MHz
80 MHz
Spatial streamsaccepts 1–8
2
Clients sharing the radiominimum 1
20

Results

Throughput per client
30.1 Mbps
Nominal PHY rate
1,205 Mbps
Realistic aggregate throughput
602 Mbps
Why the gap
Real throughput is about half the PHY rate after preamble, contention and acknowledgement overhead

Step by step

  1. 1Values used
  2. 2Wi-Fi throughput
  3. 3Throughput per client= 30.1 Mbps
  4. 4Nominal PHY rate= 1,205 Mbps
  5. 5Realistic aggregate throughput= 602 Mbps
  6. 6Why the gap= Real throughput is about half the PHY rate after preamble, contention and acknowledgement overhead

Assumptions and limits

  • The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
  • In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
  • Figures are rounded for display to 1 decimal place, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is real throughput only half the PHY rate?

Airtime is spent on preambles, contention windows, inter-frame spaces and block acknowledgements. Wi-Fi 6 improves this with OFDMA but the overhead does not vanish.

Does OFDMA change the sharing arithmetic?

It makes sharing more efficient for many small transmissions by subdividing the channel, so per-client latency improves substantially even though aggregate throughput changes less.

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