Starlink is a satellite internet service run by SpaceX. It delivers broadband through thousands of low-orbit satellites, which connect to a small dish at the customer’s home.
The service is designed for places cable and fiber don’t reach, rural properties, boats, remote worksites, and disaster zones where ground networks are unavailable. Traditional satellite internet relies on satellites nearly 36,000 kilometers above Earth. Starlink’s satellites orbit just a few hundred kilometers overhead, making the connection feel much faster. That lower orbit is the key difference between Starlink and the satellite internet of a decade ago.
How Starlink Works
Starlink connects a customer to the internet through three pieces: the dish, the constellation, and the ground gateways. The dish, a flat panel SpaceX nicknames “Dishy,” sits with a clear view of the sky and steers its beam electronically to track satellites as they pass. There are no moving parts to point it. The panel aims itself.
The dish talks to whichever satellite is overhead, and because those satellites are in low Earth orbit, each one is only in view for a few minutes. So the dish hands off to a fresh satellite constantly as the fleet moves across the sky. The satellite then relays the traffic to a ground gateway wired into the internet, or passes it between satellites using laser links in space before it comes down. Our LEO satellites explainer covers why low orbit forces this constant handoff and why it needs so many satellites to work.
The Constellation
Starlink is the largest satellite constellation ever flown, with thousands of satellites in orbit as of 2026 and more launching regularly. The scale is the product. A low-orbit satellite covers only a small patch of ground at any moment, so continuous service everywhere demands a very large fleet spread across many orbital planes. SpaceX launches its own satellites on its own rockets, which lets it add to the constellation faster and more cheaply than operators that must buy launches from someone else.
Because the fleet is always growing and older satellites are always being retired, the exact satellite count is a moving target. The satellites fly low enough that a dead one is dragged down by the faint atmosphere and burns up within a few years rather than lingering as debris. That short lifespan means SpaceX has to keep launching replacements just to hold the network steady, on top of the launches that expand it.
How Starlink’s shell compares with Iridium, GPS, and China’s networks is laid out in our satellite constellations guide.
Coverage, Speeds, and What to Expect
Starlink typically advertises download speeds in the tens to low hundreds of megabits per second, with latency that is low, roughly tens of milliseconds. Those figures are enough for video calls, streaming, and gaming, uses that older satellite internet handled poorly because of its long delay. Real performance shifts with conditions, so the numbers are a guide rather than a guarantee.
Two factors move the actual speed a user sees. The first is congestion: satellite capacity over any area is shared, so speeds can dip when many subscribers in the same region are online at once. The second is weather, since heavy rain or snow weakens the high-frequency signal the dish uses. Coverage depends on the satellites overhead and on local regulatory approval, and it has widened fast, though some areas remain waitlisted. Anyone considering it should check the official coverage map for a specific address before ordering.
Use Cases
Starlink fits wherever the ground network falls short. Its clearest home is rural and remote broadband, where a property sits beyond the reach of cable or fiber and the only prior option was slow, high-latency satellite. It also serves motion: boats, recreational vehicles, and aircraft use versions of the service built to keep a link while moving. Anyone still deciding whether the cost makes sense can see our full breakdown of whether Starlink is worth it. After a hurricane or wildfire knocks out local towers, portable Starlink terminals often restore connectivity for responders within hours.
The service comes in tiers built for these different uses. A residential plan ties service to one address and costs the least. Mobile and maritime plans cost more but keep the link while the terminal travels, and business plans add priority data so a paying site is less likely to slow down when an area gets busy. The hardware differs too: a boat or a plane in constant motion needs a sturdier, higher-performance dish than a fixed roof mount. Anyone weighing the service should match the plan to how they will actually use it, since paying for mobility a fixed home never needs is wasted money. What each tier costs, whether it carries a data cap, and how the hardware price shifts by region, is on our Starlink pricing page.
Beyond home internet, Starlink runs a separate direct-to-cell service that connects ordinary phones for texting from dead zones, using cell payloads on its satellites and partnerships with mobile carriers. That service starts with messages rather than the full broadband the dish delivers, because a bare phone cannot hold the strong link a dish can. Starlink now calls that phone service Starlink Mobile; see whether you can get Starlink Mobile on your phone and which phones work with Starlink.
How Starlink Compares to Other Satellite Internet
Starlink is not the only satellite broadband option, and the alternatives split along the low-orbit versus high-orbit line.
| Provider | Orbit | Latency | Position as of 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starlink | Low Earth orbit | Low, tens of ms | Largest fleet, consumer and enterprise |
| OneWeb | Low Earth orbit | Low | Enterprise and government focus |
| Project Kuiper | Low Earth orbit | Low | Amazon network, deploying |
| Viasat | Geostationary | High, ~500 ms | Established high-orbit broadband |
The low-orbit rivals, OneWeb and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, share Starlink’s latency advantage but sit at different stages and chase different customers. OneWeb, now part of Eutelsat, leans toward enterprise and government users. Project Kuiper is still building out its fleet, and our Project Kuiper explainer covers its deployment progress and FCC deadline status in detail. Geostationary providers such as Viasat cover wide areas with far fewer satellites, but their high orbit adds the long delay that low-orbit networks were built to avoid. SpaceX also sells a government-only line on the same hardware, and whether Starshield is the same thing as Starlink is the question that separates them.
For plan-by-plan comparisons with the geostationary incumbents, see Starlink vs HughesNet and Starlink vs Viasat.
How Long a Starlink Satellite Lasts
Each Starlink satellite is designed for roughly five years of service, after which SpaceX plans to retire and replace it rather than keep it flying indefinitely. When a satellite reaches the end of its life or fails early, SpaceX uses its onboard thrusters to actively lower the orbit until the satellite burns up in the atmosphere within weeks, a controlled disposal that goes well beyond the 25-year international guideline for clearing dead satellites out of orbit. Even a satellite that fails completely and cannot maneuver still reenters naturally within one to two years, because Starlink flies low enough, around 500 to 550 kilometers, for the thin remaining atmosphere to drag it down on its own.
That short lifespan is a tradeoff SpaceX accepted deliberately. A satellite has to keep launching replacements just to hold the constellation steady, on top of whatever growth is planned, but flying low keeps latency down and guarantees that a dead satellite does not linger as space debris for decades the way a geostationary one would.
Satellite Generations: V1, V2 Mini, and V3
SpaceX has flown three broad generations of Starlink hardware, each heavier and more capable than the last. The original V1 satellites, at roughly 260 kilograms each, made up the early constellation and are now mostly retired through the controlled deorbit process described above. The V2 Mini generation that followed weighs about 800 kilograms, carries more capacity per satellite, and added the direct-to-cell payload that lets ordinary phones connect without a dish. V2 Mini also switched to argon-fueled Hall-effect thrusters, which SpaceX’s own documentation states deliver more than double the thrust of the earlier krypton-fueled engines.
The newest generation, V3, is built around Starship rather than Falcon 9 as its launch vehicle, since its larger size and roughly tenfold jump in per-satellite capacity over V2 Mini would not fit efficiently inside Falcon 9’s smaller payload bay. Starship’s higher payload capacity is what makes a satellite that size worth building in the first place.
Who Owns Starlink
Starlink is a business unit of SpaceX rather than a separately listed company. SpaceX itself went public on June 12, 2026, and now trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, but that listing covers the combined company, launch, Starlink, and SpaceX’s newly acquired xAI operations, together. There is still no Starlink-only ticker to buy separately. SPCX is currently the only public-market way to gain exposure to Starlink’s satellite-internet business. For a fuller breakdown of that ownership structure and what changed with the IPO, read our investing explainers on whether SpaceX is publicly traded and on the SpaceX IPO itself.