Starlink’s Budget 100 Mbps Plan Costs $55 in Select Areas

Starlink now lists its cheapest U.S. home plan, Residential 100 Mbps, at $55 a month, and only in select areas. Downloads are capped at 100 Mbps. Data is unlimited, and during busy hours that traffic goes to the back of the line behind Residential Max.

The same address checker can hide the cheap tiers entirely and leave only Max at $130 a month, sometimes with an extra one-time fee tied to how crowded that cell already is.

The $55 Plan Only Shows Up in Some ZIP Codes

Starlink’s public plan page prices Residential 100 Mbps at $55 a month, Residential 200 Mbps at $85, and Residential Max at $130. Roam, the in-motion product, sits beside that card at $55 for 100GB, $80 for 300GB, and $175 for Unlimited. Hardware on a standard checkout still shows a $349 kit, and the first month of service is billed on activation or seven days after delivery, whichever comes first.

The Help Center is blunt about the two lower home tiers. Both are marked “available in select areas,” and both may run slower at peak than Max. If a plan does not appear after you enter an address, Starlink says it is not for sale at that location. There is still no public map of which counties get the $55 SKU.

In January the cheaper home tier had shown up in parts of Nebraska, Nevada, Indiana, and Maine. That list was never a coverage map, and Starlink still makes you run the address tool. The 100 Mbps plan is aimed at one-to-three-person homes that browse, take calls, and stream. The 200 Mbps plan is aimed at small and medium households. Max is the only tier Starlink describes as having the highest residential priority during the busiest hours, with typical downloads of 400+ Mbps and uploads of 20-40 Mbps. The two cheaper home plans list uploads of 15-35 Mbps.

That split is the product. Empty cells get a capped, cheaper pipe. Crowded cells get the expensive pipe, or they get no new cheap sign-ups at all.

A $40 Launch, Then a Quiet $50 Return

Residential 100 Mbps first showed up in November 2025 at $40 a month. It was pulled, then put back in January 2026 at $50, which at the time tied it with the base Roam plan as Starlink’s cheapest U.S. offering. The January 100 Mbps plan return also renamed Residential Lite to Residential 200 Mbps, kept that middle tier at $80, and cut its speed cap from 250 Mbps to 200 Mbps.

Max launched in that same reshuffle at $120 a month as the premium home line, with a Router Mini for mesh, a Starlink Mini dish as a free travel rental, and 50% off Roam. Existing customers who stepped up to Max got those extras. Customers who stepped down lost them and could owe a Mini rental. In congested cells, Starlink was already showing Max as the only residential choice, sometimes with a demand fee on top.

The company had more than 9.2 million users worldwide when that three-tier card landed. The cheap plan was never sold as a nationwide price. It was sold where the network had spare capacity, and the middle tier lost 50 Mbps of headroom on the way.

HOW THE BUDGET TIER MOVED IN 2026

1. November 2025: Residential 100 Mbps launches at $40 a month as the lowest fixed home tier.
2. January 9, 2026: The FCC authorizes SpaceX to deploy another 7,500 Gen2 satellites, bringing the Gen2 total to 15,000.
3. January 2026: The 100 Mbps plan returns at $50, Lite becomes 200 Mbps at $80 with a lower cap, and Max lists at $120.
4. May 2026: A three-month promo prices the three home tiers at $29, $59, and $99, then list prices move up for June bills.
5. June 4, 2026: Starlink says it is connecting more than 12 million active customers across 160+ countries and other markets.
6. August 2026: The optional Mini travel kit perk for Max, paused in June, shows up again on U.S. and Canadian order pages.

The $40 price lasted only a short window. By the time the tier was a named product on a three-box card, it already cost $10 more, and the middle box had less speed than Lite had advertised.

Why June Bills Rose Another $5 to $10

Starlink raised U.S. residential list prices again for June 2026 bills, taking 100 Mbps from $50 to $55, 200 Mbps from $80 to $85, and Max from $120 to $130. The Max bump is an extra $120 a year. Roam 100GB moved from $50 to $55, Roam Unlimited from $165 to $175, and Standby Mode from $5 to $10. Roam 300GB stayed at $80. New customers and current ones were both put on the new rates, and inactive accounts that came back had to restart at the new prices.

U.S. RESIDENTIAL LIST PRICES

A bigger network did not produce a cheaper national home rate. The May promo made the opposite impression for three months, with 100 Mbps at $29, 200 Mbps at $59, and Max at $99, plus free dish rental in some places. Against the then-current $50 home floor, that was $63 off the first three months of the cheap plan. A prior promo had run six months at $39, $69, and $109, so the louder $29 headline sat on a shorter clock. Analysts at BNP Paribas told clients the new promo could raise the cost of the first six months by about 0.5% to 1.3% versus the old one.

Standby at $10 is a harder pause to justify if the dish is only a backup. Rural buyers who can actually see the $55 box still talk about it as unlimited capacity their phone hotspot will not match, which is why the cheap tier keeps selling wherever Starlink will show it.

Busy Cells Still Carry a $1,500 Gate Fee

The Help Center says a one-time demand surcharge may apply in locations where network demand is high. The fee is set by service address and plan, charged per service line, and can hit on a new purchase, a new plan in a high-demand area, or a move. Starlink does not publish the dollar amounts or a surcharge map.

In certain locations where network demand is high, a one-time demand surcharge may apply when purchasing or activating Starlink service.

Starlink Help Center

Checkout pages have shown fees from $100 to $1,500. Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Wasilla have displayed $1,500, which with a $349 kit puts the door price near $1,850 before the first month of Max. In those Alaskan cells the cheap home tiers have not been on the table, so the fee sits on top of $130 service. Seattle and Portland checkouts that once showed $1,000 later showed $500, and some north Seattle addresses that carried a fee earlier in 2026 now complete without one. Spokane, Portland, and Sandpoint, Idaho, have also dropped the extra line after carrying it a year earlier.

WHEN THE DEMAND FEE KICKS IN

• New line: The fee can apply when you buy service or activate a plan in a high-demand area.
• A move: Going from a quiet cell into a busy one can trigger a new charge; a busy-to-busy move is prorated against what that line already paid.
• Standby: Pause does not wipe the fee. It only keeps prior eligibility at that address, and a surcharge can still apply when high-speed service resumes if one was never paid there.
• Retail swap: Buying a replacement kit in a store opens a new service line, which can bill the surcharge; Starlink says to go through Support to keep the existing line.
• Plan change: Switching plans later can add a surcharge if demand at that address has changed.

A 30-day hardware return refunds an eligible surcharge. After that window, Starlink’s own language is that pricing, availability, and surcharge amounts may change with capacity and regional demand. The $55 plan and the $1,500 gate are the same machine: fill the empty cells, tax the full ones.

Max Customers Keep the Better Router

The January Max bundle did not stay still. For most markets, Max now ships with a Standard Starlink kit and a Router 3, which Starlink describes as Wi-Fi 6 with three bands. Residential 200 Mbps also includes a Gen 3 Router with Wi-Fi 6 and three-band support. The 100 Mbps kit is the one that comes with the smaller Router Mini, which Starlink positions for simpler homes and for filling dead spots, not for a house full of simultaneous streams.

That hardware split is easy to miss in a speed-cap table and it is part of what $55 buys. People who order the cheap plan and then want whole-home Wi-Fi are shopping for a Router 3 on top of the $55 bill. The 200 Mbps and Max order pages also advertise free professional installation; the 100 Mbps box does not.

Max still carries the travel extra that the lower tiers do not. After Starlink pulled the free Mini rental around June 6, 2026, and grandfathered customers who had already claimed it, the U.S. and Canadian Max pages in August again offered an optional Mini kit with no monthly hardware rental and 50% off Roam, as long as the Max line stays active. The Mini is the portable dish. A roam plan is still required to use it away from the registered home address, because residential service does not roam and does not work in motion.

You can upgrade from 100 or 200 Mbps to Max in the account, subject to availability, and Starlink says that change takes effect immediately. Downgrades depend on what the address is allowed to hold. If you move a 100 or 200 Mbps line into a cell that does not sell those plans, the terms say you may have to transfer or cancel.

12 Million Customers and a Network That Still Rations

On June 4, 2026, Starlink said it was connecting more than 12 million active customers with high-speed internet across 160+ countries, territories, and other markets. SpaceX’s report for the quarter that ended in June put the same 12 million figure on Starlink and put monthly average revenue per user at $66, unchanged from the first quarter and down from $85 in the second quarter of 2025. The first-quarter count was 10.3 million. A year earlier the base was 6 million.

Starlink is connecting more than 12M active customers with high-speed internet across 160+ countries, territories and many other markets.

Thank you to all our customers around the world! 🛰️🌎❤️ → https://t.co/9VghjFeG1P pic.twitter.com/urpWSKXrFT

— Starlink (@Starlink) June 4, 2026

STARLINK AT MID-2026

• Active customers: More than 12 million as of June 4, 2026, up from more than 9.2 million in January.
• Average bill: $66 a month per user in the first and second quarters of 2026, per SpaceX’s report.
• Gen2 fleet: The January 9, 2026 FCC grant allows another 7,500 Gen2 satellites, for 15,000 Gen2 in total.
• Home floor: $55 a month for 100 Mbps, sold only where the address tool shows it.

Holding ARPU at $66 while adding millions of users is easier if the leftover-capacity SKU is $55 and the congested-cell SKU is $130 plus a gate fee. The January refresh looked like a cleaner menu. It also gave Starlink three levers on the same dish: a speed cap, a priority class, and a ZIP-level yes or no.

The FCC is scheduled to vote on September 30, 2026, on rules that would open 1,050 MHz of extra satellite spectrum in the 12.7 GHz and 42 GHz bands. That capacity would not be reserved for one operator. Until those rules, and the extra birds, show up in the address checker, the $55 plan remains a spare-capacity product, and the $130 plan remains the one that busy U.S. cells are told to buy.