NBN Sky Muster vs Sky Muster Plus

We’ve got a page dedicated to a full breakdown of Sky Muster Plus, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do a speedy recap here. If you live in a remote or offshore part of Australia, chances are you have access to NBN Sky Muster satellite. And if you do sign up to an NBN satellite plan, you’ll either be looking at a standard Sky Muster option or a Sky Muster Plus upgrade.

It’s actually a really simple breakdown between Sky Muster and Sky Muster Plus. Standard Sky Muster plans are the cheapest ones available and they’re built on one of two NBN speed tiers: NBN 12 (NBN Basic I) or NBN 25 (NBN Basic II). Meanwhile, Sky Muster Plus plans tend to guarantee speeds of at least NBN 25 but are built to reach speeds of up to NBN 50 (NBN Standard).

In terms of speeds, you can expect Sky Muster plans to offer up to 12Mbps download and 1Mbps download for NBN 12 or 25Mbps and 5Mbps for the NBN 25 plans. Sky Muster Plus plans can reach download speeds of up to 50Mbps and upload speeds of up to 5Mbps.

Because Sky Muster plans have slower max speeds, you can safely expect them to be cheaper than Sky Muster Plus plans, with the NBN 25 versions the norm these days. That said, there are some other perks that help justify the extra cost of a Sky Muster Plus plan outside of speed. For starters, video streaming and virtual private network (VPN) services are technically the only metered content, with pretty much everything else unmetered. The only disclaimer there is certain online activities may be impacted by NBN speed shaping.

There are a couple of NBN satellite standards that don’t change between Sky Muster and Sky Muster Plus, though. For starters, expect to have a similar 600ms latency regardless of the plan, which is because the Sky Muster satellites are roughly 36,000km above the planet. Additionally, because all forms of satellite internet have finite shared bandwidth, all NBN Sky Muster and Sky Muster Plus plans have data caps, separated into an on-peak (between 7:00am and 1:00am) and off-peak (between 1:00am and 7:00am) data allowance.

The table below complies NBN Co data about the differences between Sky Muster and Sky Muster Plus:

Check out the daily updating list below for a breakdown of the most popular Sky Muster Plus plans from our comparison engine.

If you fancy a speedier connection but live in a remote or offshore part of Australia, the main alternative to Sky Muster Plus is Starlink satellite. In the Sky Muster vs Starlink battle, Starlink is more expensive and subject to availability, but it does offer unlimited data, faster download speeds (up to 150Mbps currently) and significantly lower latency.