Test latency and packet loss to any server with real-time graphs, detailed statistics, and continuous connection monitoring.
Download Free on the App StorePing, MTR, and all 19 tools are free. No ads, no account required.
PingKit sends ICMP echo requests to any server or IP address and measures how long each response takes. It gives you precise latency data with visual feedback so you can understand your connection quality at a glance.
See minimum, average, maximum, and standard deviation for latency. Track jitter to understand connection consistency over time.
Every sent and received packet is counted. Even intermittent 1-2% packet loss is detected and reported, which most speed tests miss.
Watch latency plotted in real time as each ping response arrives. Spikes and drops are immediately visible on the scrolling chart.
Combines ping with traceroute to show latency and packet loss at every hop along the route. Pinpoints exactly where problems occur.
A ping test is one of the fastest ways to answer the question "is it me, or is it them?" Whenever a connection feels slow, unreliable, or just plain broken, a few seconds of pinging gives you hard numbers instead of guesswork. Here are the situations where we reach for it most often.
Online games live and die by latency. A ping test to your game server (or to a nearby public server in the same region) tells you exactly what to expect before you queue up. Under 50ms is comfortable for most games, under 20ms is what competitive players want, and anything consistently above 100ms will feel sluggish. Just as important as the average is the spread: a server that pings at a rock-steady 35ms will play far better than one that swings between 25ms and 180ms. If you want the full picture on how latency translates into the lag you feel, our guide on what ping means for gaming latency breaks it down.
When a game rubber-bands or a video call freezes for half a second, the cause is almost always latency spikes or packet loss rather than raw bandwidth. A speed test that reports "200 Mbps down" can completely hide the problem, because it only measures throughput in a short burst. Running a continuous ping during the stutter lets you watch the exact moment latency jumps or a packet goes missing, so you can correlate it with what you saw on screen.
Ping is the quickest way to confirm that a server, router, NAS, printer, or smart-home hub is actually reachable on the network. If you get replies, the device is online and responding. If every packet times out, either the host is down, it is blocking ICMP, or something between you and it is broken. Either way, you have ruled an entire category of problems in or out in seconds.
Picking the closest game region, VPN endpoint, or download mirror is much easier with real numbers. Ping a handful of candidate servers and choose the one with the lowest, steadiest latency. Geographic distance is a decent proxy for latency, but routing quirks mean the "nearest" server on a map is not always the fastest in practice, so it pays to measure rather than assume.
WiFi is the most common place for packet loss to creep in, and it is exactly the kind of problem most tools never surface. Interference from neighbouring networks, distance from the router, microwave ovens, and congested channels all cause packets to drop intermittently. A multi-minute ping test makes that loss visible as a percentage and as gaps in the live graph. If you see loss on WiFi that disappears on a wired connection or on cellular, you have found your culprit. For the full repair playbook, see our walkthrough on what packet loss is and how to fix it.
Your ISP may promise certain latency and reliability targets. Running regular ping tests to your gateway and to major public servers lets you verify they are holding up their end, and gives you concrete data if you ever need to open a support ticket. A screenshot of sustained packet loss is far more persuasive than "the internet feels slow."
These three numbers describe almost everything about how a connection feels, and they are easy to mix up. Here is each one in plain English.
Ping, also called latency, is the time it takes for a small packet to travel from your device to a server and back, measured in milliseconds (ms). Lower is better. It is fundamentally limited by physics and distance: a server on the other side of the planet will always have higher ping than one in your city, no matter how fast your plan is. This is why latency, not bandwidth, is what gamers and video callers care about most.
Jitter is how much your ping varies from one packet to the next. If ten packets come back at 30, 31, 29, 30, and 30ms, jitter is tiny and the connection feels smooth. If they come back at 30, 120, 25, 200, and 40ms, the average might still look acceptable, but the wild variation will make calls choppy and games unpredictable. PingKit reports jitter directly so you do not have to eyeball it from the graph.
Packet loss is the percentage of packets that are sent but never make it back. Lost data has to be re-sent, which causes the freezes, dropouts, and disconnects you actually notice. The internet tolerates a tiny amount of loss, but anything above roughly 1-2% sustained will degrade real-time applications. Crucially, packet loss is often intermittent, so a quick test can easily miss it; the only reliable way to catch it is to ping continuously for a while and watch the count.
There are plenty of network tools on the App Store. We built PingKit because most of them either bury the useful features behind ads and subscriptions, or stop at a bare ping with no way to dig deeper. Here is an honest look at how PingKit compares to the typical alternatives.
| PingKit | Typical free ping apps | Network "toolbox" apps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real-time latency graph | Yes, with jitter | Often text only | Sometimes |
| Packet loss tracking | Yes, continuous | Basic or none | Varies |
| MTR + traceroute included | Yes, free | Rarely | Often paywalled |
| Ads / account required | No / No | Usually ads | Often both |
To be clear, we are not claiming PingKit does something no other app can. A determined user can string together several free utilities to get similar data. What PingKit offers is all 19 tools in one place, no ads, no account, and an optional Guardian subscription if you want AI explanations and 24/7 monitoring. Everything essential is genuinely free.
If ping is high or unstable on WiFi but fine on a wired connection or cellular, the issue is almost always local. Move closer to the router, switch from the crowded 2.4GHz band to 5GHz, change to a less congested channel, and keep the router away from microwaves and cordless phones. Run a ping test before and after each change so you can see whether it actually helped instead of guessing.
Loss that comes and goes is the hardest kind to pin down, because a 10-second test will usually miss it. Start a continuous ping and leave it running for several minutes, ideally while you reproduce the problem. Watch for gaps in the live graph and a creeping loss percentage. If loss only appears under load, a failing cable, an overheating router, or an overloaded ISP segment is a common cause. Our packet loss guide covers each scenario in detail.
If you can ping an IP address such as 1.1.1.1 but websites refuse to open, your raw connection is fine and the problem is name resolution. DNS is what turns "example.com" into an address your device can reach, and a flaky or misconfigured DNS server breaks browsing while leaving ping intact. Try a public DNS resolver, or use PingKit's DNS Lookup tool to confirm whether domain names are resolving at all.
Reach for ping first. It answers the basic questions quickly: is the host up, how fast is the round trip, and am I losing packets? Once ping tells you something is wrong, switch to traceroute to find where the problem lives by listing every hop between you and the destination. Better still, run MTR, which combines both continuously so you can see latency and packet loss building up at a specific hop in real time. When you suspect a slow connection overall rather than a routing issue, a speed test measures throughput to round out the picture. All of these tools are built into PingKit.
PingKit goes further than a simple ping utility. Connection Monitor provides 24/7 latency and stability tracking with a live graph and a computed stability score. MTR combines continuous ping with traceroute so you can see not just your total latency but where along the route delays are introduced. And Smart Diagnostics runs automated analysis of your connection and gives you actionable recommendations without needing to interpret raw data yourself.
If you want hands-off monitoring, the optional Guardian subscription pairs with a free companion Mac Agent that runs ping tests around the clock. It records latency, jitter, and outages even while your iPhone is asleep, then surfaces a clear history of how your connection has behaved over hours and days. Guardian also adds plain-English AI explanations of your results, so you do not have to interpret the raw numbers yourself. It is $2.99/mo or $24.99/yr, and everything covered above stays free.
Yes. PingKit lets you ping any server or IP address directly from your iPhone, with real-time minimum, average, maximum, and jitter statistics plus packet loss percentage and live graphs. No account, no ads.
Under 100ms is fine for browsing, under 50ms is good for gaming, and under 20ms is ideal for competitive play. Video calls work well under 150ms. Consistency matters as much as the number itself.
Start a ping test in PingKit and let it run for a few minutes. It counts every sent and received packet and reports the loss percentage live. Even 1-2% sustained loss can disrupt calls and games.
Ping is round-trip time, jitter is how much that time varies between packets, and packet loss is the percentage of packets that never return. All three together describe how a connection feels in practice.
That pattern points to local WiFi interference, distance, or channel congestion rather than your ISP. Move closer to the router, switch to 5GHz, or change channels, and re-test to confirm the fix.
Ping measures latency to one destination. MTR combines ping with traceroute to show latency and packet loss at every hop along the route, which makes it far better for locating where a problem starts. Both are free in PingKit.
That usually means DNS is failing. If you can ping 1.1.1.1 but not a domain name, switch to a public DNS resolver or use PingKit's DNS Lookup tool to check whether names are resolving.
Use ping for a fast check of reachability and speed; use traceroute to find which hop is slow or dropping packets once ping shows trouble. MTR runs both together continuously.
Yes. Ping, MTR, traceroute, connection monitoring, and all 19 tools are free with no ads or limits. Guardian ($2.99/mo or $24.99/yr) optionally adds AI explanations and 24/7 monitoring.
Yes. With Guardian, the free Mac Agent runs ping tests around the clock and records latency, jitter, and outages even while your iPhone is asleep, giving you a real history instead of a single snapshot.
Continuous TLS cert monitoring, ISO 27001 PDF export, Network History AI, Apple Watch complication, and unlimited AI. $4.99/mo.
Learn about Guardian Plus →Download PingKit free and start pinging in seconds.
Download Free on the App StoreRequires iOS 17.0 or later.