Guide
How long does it take to upload 100 GB?
Updated
Uploading 100 GB takes about 4 h 27 min at 50 Mbps, 2 h 13 min at 100 Mbps and 26 min 40 s at 500 Mbps, if your connection holds its full upload speed the whole way. Real uploads run slower, so plan for about a quarter longer.
100 GB at common upload speeds
The first column is the math: 100 GB is 800,000 megabits, divided by your speed. The second assumes the upload holds 80% of that speed, which is a safer number to plan around. For any other size, use the upload time calculator.
| Upload speed | At full speed | At 80% | MB per second |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Mbps | 22 h 13 min | 27 h 47 min | 1.25 MB/s |
| 20 Mbps | 11 h 7 min | 13 h 53 min | 2.5 MB/s |
| 50 Mbps | 4 h 27 min | 5 h 33 min | 6.25 MB/s |
| 100 Mbps | 2 h 13 min | 2 h 47 min | 12.5 MB/s |
| 200 Mbps | 1 h 7 min | 1 h 23 min | 25 MB/s |
| 500 Mbps | 26 min 40 s | 33 min 20 s | 62.5 MB/s |
| 1 Gbps | 13 min 20 s | 16 min 40 s | 125 MB/s |
What's my upload speed?
Run a speed test, like Cloudflare's or fast.com, from the computer you'll upload from, on the same Wi-Fi or cable. Use the upload number, not the download. On cable and DSL plans the upload is often a small fraction of the download: a plan sold as 300 Mbps might upload at 20.
Why does a real upload take longer than the math?
- Overhead. Every request carries headers, encryption and acknowledgements on top of your file. It's a few percent, but it never goes away.
- Wi-Fi. Walls, distance and the neighbours' networks all cut into the speed your laptop gets. A speed test next to the router flatters you.
- Everything else on the line. Cloud backups, photo sync, a video call in the next room. They share the same upload.
- The service. Some upload one piece at a time, so each pause between pieces is wasted time. Some put free accounts in a slower queue.
- Interruptions. On a long upload something will happen. A tool that starts over can turn a 4-hour upload into an 8-hour one.
What did we measure?
Our release test uploads 100 GiB (about 107 GB) from a browser while breaking it on purpose eight times: offline for 90 seconds, a rejected part, a reload, a closed tab, a 20-minute freeze, a browser crash, a wrong file picked, and a lost final response. It finished in 56 minutes, freeze included, with the file matching byte for byte.
Between failures it ran at 74 to 75 MiB/s, about 620 Mbps. That ran on a data-centre machine, not a home connection, so read it as what the uploader can do, not what your Wi-Fi will. Sending four parts at once instead of one took a 10 GiB test with the same failures from 14.8 to 43.1 MiB/s.
How do I make a big upload finish sooner?
- Plug in an ethernet cable if you can. It beats Wi-Fi almost every time.
- Pause cloud backups and sync apps until the upload is done.
- Run one big upload at a time. Two at once each get half.
- Keep the computer awake. On a Mac, plug in power and stop it sleeping in Battery settings. Resuming saves the work, not the time; a sleeping laptop uploads nothing.
- Use a tool that keeps what arrived. With Tranzfer, a drop or a crash costs you the parts in flight, not the hours before them. Start it before bed and check in the morning.
Questions people ask
How long does 100 GB take on gigabit internet?
13 min 20 s at a full gigabit. In practice, plan for 16 min 40 s or more, because few uploads hold the full line speed for long.
How long does it take to upload 1 TB?
22 h 13 min at 100 Mbps with the line flat out, and 44 h 27 min at 50 Mbps. A terabyte is an overnight job on almost any home connection, so use a tool that resumes.
What's the difference between Mbps and MB/s?
Divide by 8. Internet speeds are in megabits per second (Mbps); file sizes are in megabytes (MB). 100 Mbps moves 12.5 MB a second.
Does the download take as long as the upload?
The recipient's download speed decides that, not yours. Home connections usually download several times faster than they upload, so the download is often the short part.