Starlink is about to get more expensive for its nearly 3 million customers in the US, as it raises prices on almost all plans by $5 to $10 per month. Starlink’s Roam customers who want to put their service on hold will also now have to pay $10 per month for Standby Mode instead of $5, as reported earlier by PCMag.

Emails sent out to customers say that the price increases will kick in for existing customers on or after June 18. The only Starlink plan that remains unchanged is the Roam 300GB plan, which will stay at $80 per month.

Price increases are nothing new in the internet world — 63% of Americans said they saw their internet bill increase last year, according to a 2025 CNET survey — but Starlink has generally gone the other route, offering deals that would lure new customers away from their current internet service providers.

“Pricing has remained unchanged for most residential customers for the past several years, and strong demand for Starlink reflects the value customers continue to see in the service,” the company wrote in an email to customers. “This adjustment supports ongoing improvements and investment in affordable, high-performance products and services as global operating costs continue to rise.”

It’s true that Starlink has seen demand surging in the US. It has about 2.7 million American customers in the US right now, which is nearly double what it was in August 2024. But as Starlink has grown, it’s faced increasing questions about its ability to keep up with that demand. 

Starlink is getting faster, but it’s still far slower than most ISPs

Starlink’s email to customers cites “ongoing improvements” to its service as justification for its price increases, and there’s no question that it’s made huge investments in its network. In 2026 alone, Starlink added 7.6 satellites to its megaconstellation every day on average, many of which were its newer Generation 3 (V3) satellites that have increased capacity over previous versions.

But the more customers it adds, the more difficult it is to keep up speeds. One analysis last year from Penn State University’s X-Lab found that Starlink can support only 6.66 households per square mile before speeds drop below FCC broadband minimums (100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload).

Remarkably, Starlink has gotten faster at the same time as it’s added millions of new customers, but it’s still not hitting that FCC minimum for most people. According to the most recent speed test data from Ookla, 44.7% of Starlink customers in the US reached the 100/20 Mbps mark in the fourth quarter of 2025 — a dramatic increase from the 17.4% who met it in the first quarter of 2025. (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

While that’s a massive improvement, it’s still a long way from wired connections like cable and fiber. AT&T Fiber, for instance, recorded median speeds of 369/309Mbps in the second half of 2025, according to Ookla. 

Pricing has been one lever that Starlink’s used to protect its capacity, but it’s usually been limited to high-congestion areas that already had a lot of users. At my address in Seattle, for example, you’d currently have to pay a $500 “demand surcharge” to get service. But it has generally avoided the kind of blanket price increases that are common in the broadband industry. 

As SpaceX prepares for its IPO next month, it’s beginning to act more and more like a traditional internet provider, where price increases are a tried-and-true part of the game plan. 

“I suppose it’s a good business model,” wrote one user on Reddit. “They now have a population of dependent people with no other choices so they can do whatever they want until/if a competitor comes.”