WOW!’s fiber is difficult to beat, but if cable is your only option, Xfinity may be the way to go.
WOW! vs. Xfinity: Which Internet Provider Should You Get?
Fiber connectivity
Overall Quality ⁃ 3.9/5
3.8/5 - Speed and reliability
4.5/5 - Dollar value
3.3/5 - Customer experience
Better value for cable
Overall Quality ⁃ 3.8/5
4.3/5 - Speed and reliability
3.8/5 - Dollar value
3.3/5 - Customer experience 
9 min readSometimes regional ISPs are a great alternative to large nationwide providers. If you live in a region where WOW! operates, it’s worth learning more about. The internet service provider has been rolling out fiber internet to its customers, allowing for faster internet speeds and more reliable service. WOW! offers a wide range of plans with various prices, speeds, perks, and benefits.
But Xfinity still has a lot going for it, despite (or maybe due to) being such a massive company. While Xfinity doesn’t offer fiber to the home plans yet, it has pretty much nailed cable internet.
Curious about whether you should go for WOW! or Xfinity? Read on for our full comparison between the two, including which service is better for different situations.
“It's been rock solid for me, and it's great speed for the price.” —WOW! customer Gary LaPointe
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Want to know if WOW! or Xfinity are available where you live? Run a search with your zip code below to find out.
WOW! vs. Xfinity: Plans, pricing, and speed
| Provider | | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per month |
$30-$185
|
$9.95-$75
|
| Download speeds | 100-5000 Mbps | 50-1200 Mbps |
| Upload speeds | 50-5000 Mbps | 10-35 Mbps |
| Details | View Plans | View Plans |
Data as of 04/05/2023. Offers and availability vary by location and are subject to change.
Both WOW! and Xfinity offer a variety of plans: Some offer slower and more affordable service, others cost more for higher speeds. WOW!’s plans start at $30, and for that money, you get an option of either a 300Mbps cable connection or a 100Mbps fiber connection, depending on your region and the available offerings. If you do have access to WOW! Fiber, you can get plans with symmetrical speeds up to 5Gbps, which costs $185 per month.
Xfinity offers only cable connectivity, but its plans still get respectably fast. The entry-level Xfinity plan costs $30 per month for download speeds of 150Mbps. The fastest Xfinity plan races along at 1,200Mbps, and it costs $75 per month. Because it’s a cable plan, its upload speeds aren’t as fast as they would be if it was a fiber plan, and generally Xfinity’s upload speeds range up to 20Mbps.
“Xfinity was the first internet service I thought of ordering.” – Xfinity customer Chantel Buchi
WOW! vs. Xfinity: Fees for modem and installation
What makes this review legit?
Our fact-based research process centers on interviews with internet customers across the country, helping us understand how internet services hold up against diverse needs and challenges.
To put together this review, we looked at results from our speed test, pulled data from customer satisfaction surveys, and pored over the fine print to compare prices and speeds between the two providers. To flesh out our analysis, we also interviewed WOW! and Xfinity customers to get their firsthand insights. We let their experiences guide our research and shape our conclusions. We also speak with ISP spokespeople and industry experts to get insights into connection types, speed capabilities, and other technical issues related to internet service.
The matchup—how we rate WOW! vs. Xfinity
For all our internet reviews, we give a rating based on three main criteria—speed and reliability, dollar value, and customer experience—which we then average to make an overall score.
Here, we compare those ratings face to face. We then offer some analysis and context for important factors to keep in mind.
Want to know more? Read our full-length WOW! review and Xfinity review.
Speed and reliability
WOW!: 3.8/5.0 | Xfinity: 4.3/5.0
WOW! offers a mixture of cable and fiber internet plans, and, while its fiber connectivity isn’t as widely available as its cable offerings, its fiber network is growing. Generally speaking, fiber connectivity is faster and more reliable than cable connectivity, and that’s true on WOW!’s plans too. WOW!’s cheapest plan costs only $15. However, for that, you get relatively slow speeds at up to 50Mbps, and only the most basic users find this plan to be fast enough. WOW! fiber internet plans start at $30 per month, which is pretty inexpensive for a fiber-to-home connection. And you get speeds of 300Mbps—those speeds are symmetrical, meaning that upload speeds and download speeds are the same.
WOW! does impose some additional fees on customers, though. For example, you have to pay $10 for self-installation activation and $99 for professional installation. Depending on your region and plan, you may also have to pay data overage charges, which costs you $10 per 50GB, though WOW! does, thankfully, charge a maximum of $50. Most of WOW!‘s plans don’t have overage charges, and it seems like these charges are regional. WOW!’s cable plans aren’t necessarily all that reliable, however they do seem to be mostly on par with other cable providers.
As mentioned, Xfinity only offers cable connectivity for its widely available plans. These plans do offer decent value for money, though, especially on the low end. The Xfinity Connect plan costs only $30 per month and offers download speeds of 150 Mbps. You can pay up to $75 per month for a 1200 Mbps plan, though there are 2000 Mbps plans available in some select areas too. That said, Xfinity does also impose additional fees, including a modem router rental fee of $15 per month, professional installation for $100, and data overage charges of $10 per 50GB.
Xfinity may only offer cable plans, but as far as reliability goes, it’s among the better providers. As mentioned, Xfinity has been working at cable connectivity for a long time, and while it’s not immune to issues, it does seem to generally offer better reliability than some other cable providers. Xfinity scores better in this section for that reason, considering the fact that WOW!’s fiber plans still have yet to more widely roll out.
Dollar value
WOW!: 4.5/5.0 | Xfinity: 3.8/5.0
Xfinity offers pretty good value for money, especially when compared to other national providers, but it can’t quite reach the excellent value offered by WOW!. Xfinity’s base plan costs $30 per month, and for that, you get 150Mbps download speeds. That’s not bad, but for the same price, WOW! offers double the speed. As you climb up in cable speeds, Xfinity does start to pull ahead a little. For example, Xfinity’s Gigabit Extra plan costs $75 per month and offers speeds of up to 1,200Mbps. WOW! also offers a 1,200Mbps plan, but it costs $95 per month.
But once you start looking at fiber, things change a little. WOW!‘s fiber plans may seem a little pricey, considering the price tag of $80 per month for 1Gbps speeds,—which is $10 more than Xfinity’s 1 Gbps cable plan. However, it’s important to keep in mind that fiber internet plans are generally much more reliable and are capable of symmetrical upload and download speeds. So you get superfast upload speeds, too. That’s helpful for those who livestream or upload video content.
WOW! doesn’t quite compete with Google Fiber on value, but almost no one can. It does take out the likes of Xfinity, though, thanks to its great entry-level plans and its fiber connections.
Customer experience
WOW!: 3.3/5.0 | Xfinity: 3.3/5.0
Sometimes regional providers offer much better customer service than nation-spanning companies, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. WOW! and Xfinity are more or less the same when it comes to overall customer experience. And while neither of them are terrible, neither of them are all that great, either. We spoke to a number of WOW! customers who find the customer experience to be less than helpful. One customer had a 20-minute outage followed by two hours of unstable service and found that customer support was completely unhelpful during that time. Highspeedinternet.com ranks WOW! just below average for customer satisfaction, while the American Customer Service Index ranks it at slightly above average for fiber and slightly below average for cable.
To be clear, things aren’t better with Xfinity. We also spoke to a number of Xfinity customers who gave mixed reviews regarding overall customer satisfaction. To be fair, not too many customers had anything overly negative to say about the provider’s customer service or the overall experience of using Xfinity. However, some customers feel that Xfinity leverages its role as the only provider in their area to charge higher prices.
If customer experience is highly important to you, then neither of these providers is all that great. However, if you’re deciding between the two, it might help to know that they are on equal footing.
Overall quality: Which internet provider should you pick?
The provider that’s better for your needs depends on a variety of factors, like what’s available in your region and what you’re willing to spend. For most users, WOW! offers a slightly better deal, especially for users who live in an area with WOW! fiber or who want an entry-level plan that doesn’t cost all that much.
However, customers looking for a reasonably fast plan and willing to spend a little extra on a faster plan, and who only have access to cable connectivity, may find that Xfinity’s plans offer slightly better value overall.
WOW! vs. Xfinity—what deals and promotions can you get?
Both WOW! and Xfinity offer a number of deals and promotions to entice new customers. WOW!, for example, offers discounts on services like YouTube TV and mobile plans. Xfinity also offers discounts for bundling with an Xfinity mobile line. Xfinity also has add-ons like the ability to pay a monthly fee to avoid data overages.
Get 200Mbps for $30–$35 per month
Get the 200Mbps Connect More plan for $30 to $35 per month when you sign up for two years.
WOW! add-ons and perks
Sign up for WOW! Mobile after getting internet.
Get it for $5 per month when you sign up for WOW! Internet.
Xfinity add-ons and perks
Pay extra on your plan to add unlimited data (price varies by region).
Sign up for the X1 add-on.
Join in the Xfinity app after signing up and get monthly perks.
WOW! vs. Xfinity: What do customers think?
We spoke to a variety of WOW! customers, and in general, we found that they have mixed opinions. That said, some customers are thrilled about the service. One customer we spoke to, Gary LaPointe from Dearborn, Michigan, loves WOW! Internet. Over the nine years that he’s been a customer, he’s used a variety of different WOW! cable plans.
“I've tried higher speeds up to 1Gbps, but the higher speeds were basically for two different reasons: Higher upload speeds (most of the lower plans were only 10Mbps up, and when I was teaching from home, I wanted a little higher upload speed) AND higher data cap (in some areas, they implemented a data cap and higher speed plans had higher caps),” explains LaPointe.
Not all customers have had the same experience, though. Some WOW! customers have had frustrating experiences. Reddit user throwawaydakappa is a customer who has had an inconsistent experience with WOW!‘s customer service. Initially, this customer was told that they’d get one month of service for free as a promotion.
“45 days later my service was disconnected for non-payment. Weird, cause my first month is supposed to be free.”
“It's been rock solid for me, and it's great speed for the price.” —Gary LaPointe
Plenty of Xfinity customers have had a mixed experience too, though. This is to be expected from such a massive cable provider. We spoke to a number of customers who felt like Xfinity abuses its position as the only provider in their areas by charging higher rates and refusing to offer promotional rates that they felt would be offered to customers with more options. However, we also spoke to some customers who had nothing bad to say about Xfinity.
“My parents had Xfinity Internet, and there were no problems,” said Chantel Buchi, an Xfinity customer in Salt Lake City. “So when we got our own place, Xfinity was the first internet service I thought of ordering. Also, based on reviews, I knew Xfinity was one of the best cable internet providers. We’ve never experienced throttling or outages.”
Another customer we spoke to, Rachel Mabey in Bountiful, Utah, said that she was only an Xfinity customer because her alternative was a slow DSL provider. Unfortunately, she was part of an October 2023 data breach that led to hackers gaining information like the last four digits of her social security number. These hackers tried to access her and her fiancé’s email accounts but couldn’t due to two-factor authentication.
“[Xfinity] didn't do anything while it was happening. I reached out to customer service and they acted like everything was fine. I, however, knew it wasn't,” Mabey said. “About a week later, they put a message on their website talking about the breach.”
“The area I live in only has two choices, Xfinity and Centurylink. Otherwise I would go with someone else in a heartbeat.” – Rachel Mabey
Want WOW! or Xfinity? Find it in your area
If you’re looking for an extremely inexpensive plan or have access to fiber, then WOW! is the way to go. But if cable is your only option and you want a plan that’s a little faster, then Xfinity might be the provider for you.
Find WOW! or Xfinity in your area
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