The short answer
- Competitive shooters (Valorant, CS2, Apex): aim for jitter under 5 ms.
- MOBAs (LoL, Dota 2): under 10 ms is great, 10-20 ms is fine.
- Fighting games: under 3 ms — they tick at 60 fps and can't hide jitter at all.
- Cloud gaming (GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud): under 8 ms; jitter ruins the input feel.
- Casual / RPG: below 30 ms is unnoticeable.
Why jitter matters more than ping
A consistent 80 ms ping is playable in almost every game. An average 25 ms ping that swings between 5 and 80 ms (high jitter) feels broken. Predictable lag the netcode can compensate for; unpredictable lag it can't.
How to measure
Run NetStartr. Jitter shows up next to ping in the results card. We also pack jitter and packet loss into a single stability score for a one-glance read.
How to lower jitter
- Ethernet, every time. Wi-Fi 5 typically jitters 10-30 ms, Wi-Fi 6 5-15 ms, wired 0-3 ms.
- Quality of Service (QoS). Most modern routers let you tag gaming traffic as priority — turn it on.
- Drop the mesh. Mesh nodes near your PC add jitter; pull a cable instead.
- 5 GHz only. 2.4 GHz is microwaves, baby monitors and Bluetooth chaos.