How PickMyProvider collects data, scores providers, and maintains editorial independence across every city and state page we publish.
At PickMyProvider, our mission is to provide the most accurate, localized, and transparent broadband data in the United States. Every ranking, rating, and recommendation on our platform is the product of a repeatable, data-driven process — not editorial opinion, not advertising relationships, and not provider payments.
We monitor over 2,000 local and national ISPs, analyze thousands of ZIP codes daily, and cross-reference data from multiple federal and commercial sources to ensure that what you read here reflects the real broadband landscape at your address — not a generalized national average.
This page explains exactly how we work. If you ever have questions about a specific ranking or data point, our editorial team welcomes direct inquiries through our Contact page.
Our proprietary scoring model evaluates every internet provider across four weighted pillars. The weights are calibrated to reflect what real households consistently report as their top priorities when choosing an ISP — verified through customer satisfaction surveys and behavioral data.
We calculate the true cost of internet service — including price-per-megabit, equipment rental fees, installation charges, promotional pricing cliffs, and data overage costs. Advertised prices alone are not sufficient; we analyze the full 12-month cost of ownership.
We prioritize real-world speed data over advertised maximums. We weight symmetrical upload/download speeds (a fiber advantage) and low latency heavily, as these are critical for remote work, video conferencing, and online gaming.
A provider only ranks highly if they have meaningful coverage in a specific ZIP code or city. We verify availability at the census block level using FCC Broadband Data Collection records — not just the provider's self-reported service map.
We award higher scores to ISPs offering no-contract, month-to-month plans with no early termination fees, and plans with truly unlimited data. Providers with restrictive multi-year contracts or hidden throttling policies are scored lower.
To ensure our 50,000+ local pages are accurate and trustworthy, we aggregate data from multiple authoritative federal, commercial, and proprietary sources. We never rely on a single data point — every claim is cross-referenced before publication.
We utilize the latest FCC federal records — updated twice yearly — to verify which providers officially serve specific census blocks. This is the most granular government source for ISP availability in the United States and forms the foundation of our local coverage maps.
We monitor NTIA infrastructure grant data to identify upcoming fiber expansions and federally funded broadband buildouts under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. This allows us to flag areas where new service is coming soon — information most comparison sites do not provide.
We monitor pricing and plan data directly from major ISP websites and, where available, provider APIs — including Spectrum, Xfinity, AT&T, Frontier, and T-Mobile. Our team reviews this data daily for major providers and weekly for regional ISPs, capturing promotional changes, plan restructures, and pricing increases as they happen.
We analyze real-world speed data collected across thousands of ZIP codes to compare advertised speeds against actual performance in residential neighborhoods. Our speed analysis distinguishes between fiber, cable, DSL, and satellite connection types to provide technology-specific benchmarks — not misleading blended averages.
We aggregate customer reviews and ratings from multiple verified sources, including direct user submissions to PickMyProvider, third-party consumer review platforms, and our proprietary customer satisfaction surveys conducted with real ISP subscribers. All reviews are screened for authenticity before being included in our scoring.
While we use data models to scale information across thousands of ZIP codes, every recommendation on PickMyProvider is guided and reviewed by our editorial team. We do not publish AI-generated content without expert human review, fact-checking, and approval.
Our engineers pull data from over 2,000 local and national ISPs on a continuous basis. We filter out inactive or "zombie" providers that no longer actively offer residential service, and we manually correct errors found in government coverage maps — because showing you a provider that isn't actually available at your address wastes your time and erodes your trust.
Where available, our team physically tests ISP hardware — routers, gateways, and modems — and evaluates customer service response times across phone, chat, and online channels. We also conduct mystery shopping exercises to verify that a provider's advertised checkout process, promotional offers, and pricing match what consumers actually encounter. If there's a gap between marketing and reality, we note it in our reviews.
Unlike sites that give broad national advice, PickMyProvider focuses on the city and county level. We identify local market nuances — such as municipal fiber networks, regional cable monopolies, rural cooperative ISPs, and areas with upcoming infrastructure investment — to give you a realistic picture of your actual options. What's true in Manhattan is often irrelevant in rural Mississippi.
Every article, ranking page, and provider review is written, fact-checked, and approved by a member of our editorial team before publication. Our editors verify that all data citations are current, all pricing is accurate, and all recommendations align with our scoring methodology. Pages are reviewed and updated on a regular schedule — or immediately when significant provider changes occur.
The broadband landscape changes constantly — providers raise prices, expand coverage, launch new plans, and discontinue others. Our full provider database is refreshed monthly for all ISPs. For major national providers like Xfinity, Spectrum, and AT&T, we monitor pricing changes daily, with a target of reflecting any plan update within 48 to 72 hours of it going live.
Enter your ZIP code to see every ISP available at your address — ranked and scored using the methodology described on this page.