1 Gbps Fibre The Cheapest Megabits
Gigabit is where rand-per-megabit bottoms out, and the cheapest gigabit line costs less per month than a typical 500 Mbps one. Two things to read before you order: most packages in this band are not symmetrical, and almost nothing in your house can actually receive a gigabit over Wi-Fi.
| Metric | Value | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest line | R799 | 1000/1000 Mbps · Mweb |
| Fastest line | 2500 Mbps | R1 995/month · Octotel |
| Best value | R0.80/Mbps | 2500 Mbps at R1 995 |
| Symmetrical | 22 of 72 | packages upload at download speed |
What 1000 Mbps actually gives you
Real-world expectations for a 1000 Mbps fibre line, based on average device count, codec efficiency and SA peering as of 2026.
| Activity | Verdict | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Uploading large video projects | Great | The single best reason to buy this tier, and only on a symmetrical package. A 200 GB project archive goes up in well under an hour instead of overnight. On an asymmetric gig line you get half that or less. |
| Whole-house cloud backup | Great | A first full backup of several hundred gigabytes completes inside an evening rather than running for days. |
| Game downloads and patches | Great | A 100 GB install lands in around fifteen minutes, which is fast enough that it stops being something you schedule. |
| Many simultaneous 4K streams | Great | Forty concurrent 4K streams would still not fill the line. Streaming stopped being the constraint several tiers ago. |
| A house full of heavy users at once | Great | This is what the tier is actually for: total capacity across many people, not peak speed for one. |
| Getting a gigabit over Wi-Fi | No | Not on any normal setup. Wi-Fi 6 in the same room with a good client might reach two-thirds of it; a phone across the house will see a fraction. If you buy this tier and keep a bundled router you are paying for capacity that stops at the router. |
| Getting the full line rate on one device | No | Gigabit Ethernet itself tops out fractionally below 1 Gbps once overhead is counted, so a single machine cannot quite receive the whole line. On the 2.5 Gbps package you would need 2.5GbE end to end, which almost no home has. |
| Lowering your ping | No | Latency is set by routing and the network, not by capacity. Moving from 100 Mbps to gigabit will not reduce your ping - if that is the goal, this is the wrong purchase. |
Who 1000 Mbps is built for
Gigabit / Top of the Ladder, best for large uploads, many heavy users, future-proofing. Here's where it shines and where it falls short.
Best for
- People who upload for a livingVideo and post-production, photography, 3D and CAD, anyone pushing finished work to clients or cloud storage every day. On a symmetrical gigabit line a day's rushes go up while you make coffee. Note carefully that this is the case for a symmetrical package specifically, and that they are the minority of this band - the cheap entries are usually not.
- Households where the line is genuinely shared and busyTen or more active devices, several people working, someone gaming and someone else streaming 4K, all at once and all day. At this speed the connection stops being a resource anyone in the house has to think about or negotiate over.
- Anyone whose price-per-Mbps matters more than their billSort the table by price-per-Mbps rather than by headline price and this tier wins by a clear margin over every rung below it. That is a real finding and it is why the cheapest gigabit line beats a mid-priced 500 Mbps one on absolute rands too. It is still a different question from whether you can use a gigabit.
- People upgrading rather than buying moreIf you already pay a mid-market rate for 200 or 500 Mbps, the value cliff below may mean gigabit costs you less than you pay now. Check that block before you assume the faster tier is the dearer one - on this ladder that assumption is frequently wrong.
Not for you if
- You are buying it to make one laptop or one phone faster - no single device receives a gigabit over Wi-Fi, and this tier only pays back across many users at once
- You need upload as much as download but are buying on price - most of the cheap lines in this band are asymmetric, which removes most of the reason to buy gigabit
- Your router is the one the ISP bundled; it will be the ceiling long before the line is, and replacing it is far cheaper than this tier
- Your devices connect over gigabit Ethernet - that caps a single machine just below the line rate, and on the 2.5 Gbps package well under half of it
- Nobody in the house uploads large files and there are fewer than about six active devices; 100 or 200 Mbps will run everything you do for a lot less
- You want a service-level agreement, a guaranteed repair window or a static IP, none of which residential gigabit includes
- Coverage is the real constraint - fewer networks carry this band than carry 100 Mbps, so check your address before comparing anything
The case for 1000 Mbps
The lowest price-per-Mbps on the ladder
Monthly prices climb far more slowly than speeds do, so each rung up buys cheaper megabits than the one below. Gigabit is where that bottoms out - the median price-per-Mbps in this band is comfortably under the 500 Mbps band's, and the best line in it is a fraction of what an entry-level package charges per megabit. Every row in the table shows its own price-per-Mbps and the value-cliff block computes the medians from the live catalogue, so you can check that rather than take it on trust.
The biggest value cliff on the ladder is the step into this tier
The cheapest gigabit line we track costs less per month, in absolute rands, than the median 500 Mbps line - and the gap is wider here than at any other rung. If you are currently paying a middling rate for 500 Mbps, the faster tier may be the cheaper one. The value-cliff block computes the current figure in both directions from the live pool; if it favours the upgrade, the slower tier is simply the worse deal.
Most gigabit lines are not symmetrical, which reverses the tier below
This is the least obvious thing on the page and the one most likely to cost you money. At 500 Mbps the majority of packages are symmetrical. At gigabit the majority are not: most of this band is sold with an upload well below the download, commonly half or a quarter of it, and the cheaper entries are disproportionately the asymmetric ones. If upload is why you are buying gigabit, filtering on headline speed alone will hand you a package that does not do the job. The table lists both figures on every line - compare the pair, not the headline.
Your home network becomes the product
At 100 Mbps almost any router copes. At gigabit the hardware in your house is the ceiling in nearly every case. Gigabit Ethernet cannot quite carry the full line, Wi-Fi will not come close except in the same room on modern kit, and a single old switch or powerline adapter anywhere in the path caps everything behind it. Test on a cable before blaming the ISP, and be honest about whether a better router would have been the cheaper upgrade.
The same speed varies by more than three times in price
The most expensive gigabit package we track costs over three times the cheapest, for the same headline speed. Almost all of that is which network reaches your address, not which ISP you buy from - so coverage is not a footnote on this tier, it is the main determinant of the price. Check the map, find your network, then filter the table to it.
One package faster than a gigabit, and it is not the dearest
The pool holds a single package above 1 Gbps: a 2500/2500 line on Octotel, in Cape Town only. It is listed in the table on this page because that is where a reader searching for the fastest available line will arrive, and it is worth knowing that it is priced below a number of ordinary gigabit packages. Receiving it needs 2.5-gigabit networking end to end, which is a separate and non-trivial purchase.
Live 1000 Mbps fibre deals
72 1000 Mbps (or close) fibre deals across the 5 ISPs we track, on 29 networks. Sorted cheapest first.
Prices checked 22 September 2026 · price-per-Mbps shown on every deal
- Free-to-Use router
- Free Wi-Fi router
- Free install + activation
- 60 free voice mins (Vobi)
- Promo: first 3 months
- Free Wi-Fi router
- Free install + activation
- 60 free voice mins (Vobi)
- Promo: first 3-4 months
- Free standard installation
- Free Wi-Fi router
- Free standard installation
- Free Wi-Fi router
- FREE Wi-Fi router
- Save up to R5 000
- Free-to-Use router
- Free setup worth R1416
- Free-to-Use router
- Free setup worth R1149
- Free Wi-Fi router
- Free install + activation
- 60 free voice mins (Vobi)
- Promo: first 3 months
- Free-to-Use router
- Free setup worth R1725
1000/1000 Mbps Uncapped
1000/500 Mbps Uncapped
1000/250 Mbps Uncapped
1000/250 Mbps Uncapped
1000/500 Mbps Uncapped
1000/200 Mbps Uncapped
850/850 Mbps Uncapped
900/500 Mbps Uncapped
1000/1000 Mbps Uncapped
1000/250 Mbps Uncapped
Showing 10 of 72 deals · Prices indicative · Sign-up via the listed ISP · Affiliate links may earn us a commission on referrals
The speed-tier value cliff
Fibre gets cheaper per megabit the faster it goes, and the drop is steep enough to invert the sticker price. This is the top of the ladder, so read the last row: it is what a typical line one tier down costs against the cheapest line here.
| Tier | Packages | Median price | Median R/Mbps | Cheapest one tier up | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Mbps | 20 | R447 | R39.90 | 20 Mbps at R349 — Mweb on Fibre Geeks | −R98 |
| 20 Mbps | 86 | R525 | R19.75 | 40 Mbps at R427 — Afrihost on Openserve Web Connect | −R98 |
| 40 Mbps | 133 | R697 | R13.72 | 100 Mbps at R610 — Vox on Frogfoot | −R87 |
| 100 Mbps | 144 | R895 | R8.79 | 200 Mbps at R715 — Vox on Frogfoot | −R180 |
| 200 Mbps | 112 | R1 117 | R5.08 | 500 Mbps at R749 — Mweb on Metro Nexus | −R368 |
| 500 Mbps | 85 | R1 297 | R2.61 | 1 Gbps at R799 — Mweb on Cybersmart | −R498 |
Frequently asked questions
Get 1000 Mbps fibre via Webafrica
Free standard install, free Wi-Fi router and uncapped 1000 Mbps speeds. South Africa's #1 Netflix-ranked ISP.