GFiber (formerly Google Fiber) Internet Review: My Honest Experience After Two Years

GFiber is Reviews.org’s top pick for internet service, but you might find other providers are more widely available in your city and may offer a better fit for your budget or speed needs. AT&T Fiber is a major competitor of GFiber and comes with all the same benefits (equipment included, free installation, no extra fees) plus a 20% discount if you also bundle with AT&T's wireless service. AT&T also offers a wide range of plans, starting from $55 per month for 300Mbps. That's less speed, but it’s also cheaper.

If you can’t get a fiber internet provider, several cable providers like Xfinity, Spectrum, or Optimum deliver fast download speeds, albeit with eventual price increases.

Otherwise, T-Mobile 5G Home Internet is another good option. You can’t expect the epic performance of fiber internet with a 5G internet provider, but you can expect flat rates as low as $35 per month when bundled with a T-Mobile wireless plan.

 In summary:

• People love that GFiber prices haven’t increased in years
• The customer service is often great, although not everyone has a good experience
• Most users don’t need a multigigabit plan

In general, GFiber customers are satisfied with their service and prices. “The customer service is excellent,” says Monica Yoshida, a fellow staff writer at Reviews.org who loves her GFiber 1 Gig plan. “I like the predictable billing. I know it’s not going up or down.”

Previously, Yoshida used Xfinity but was unhappy with the lack of communication and frequent price increases. This isn’t a surprise, considering GFiber snags a score of 76/100 in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which indicates an above-average score for customer satisfaction. Xfinity scores a 68/100 in the same survey.

In the last two years, Yoshida experienced one hiccup with GFiber: A stressful, hour-long outage that interrupted her workday. “Any outage could mean you miss meetings and all your projects are on hold. I didn’t want to go out and find a coffee shop to work in because I had a small baby depending on me to be at home,” Yoshida says. However, she praises GFiber’s customer service for their attentiveness and ability to resolve the issue remotely. “They walked me through it. It didn’t feel like they were reading off a script.”

However, not all customers rave about GFiber. My other colleague, Bryan Mill, at first only got meager 1Mbps speeds on his 1 Gig plan in Salt Lake City, Utah. “They would force me to try to troubleshoot it on my own first before deeming if it was necessary to send someone out,” explains Mill. GFiber eventually sent out a technician, but the problem persisted. “It was a great service when it worked, but it was a pretty abysmal experience trying to get consistently working.”

GFiber does have a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Edge 8 Gig customers, or you get a 25% refund on your monthly bill if your internet is down for more than 45 minutes.

GFiber advertises its multi-gig plans for content creators and gamers, but it’s not worth it for the average household. “It’s like paying for a giant water main pipe that connects to a garden hose. The water can only come out as fast as the garden hose will allow it,” says Katie Donaldson, a current GFiber 5 Gig customer and network operations manager. To experience the advertised speeds, Donaldson and her husband, Kenneth, purchased a 10Gbps-compatible router and replaced the network interface cards in their computers.

Over the years, the couple tried out GFiber’s 1 and 2 Gig plans and say that even for avid gamers, there isn’t a need to get more than 1 Gig. However, Kenneth is a software engineer and AI enthusiast, so he likes how he can download large language models in a matter of seconds on the 2 Gig or 5 Gig plan.

When I asked Kenneth if his 5 Gig plan was worth it, he replied, “Is it worth it to get DoorDash, rather than driving to get food?” He adds, “I don’t need it. This is the nerd version of conspicuous consumption.”