How Long Do Steam Game Downloads Take?
Download time estimates for indie, mid-size, and AAA Steam games at common internet speeds, and why Steam shows MB/s instead of Mbps.
Modern games are big: indie titles are usually a few GB, mid-size games run 20–40 GB, and AAA releases like Call of Duty can exceed 150 GB with all packs installed. Your download speed determines whether that’s a coffee break or an overnight job.
One common confusion: Steam displays speeds in MB/s (megabytes per second), while your internet plan is sold in Mbps (megabits per second). Divide by 8 — a 100 Mbps plan tops out around 12.5 MB/s in Steam, so the numbers you see are correct, just in a different unit.
Steam download time estimates
| Game size | 50 Mbps | 100 Mbps | 500 Mbps | 1 Gbps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 GB (indie) | 14m 19s | 7m 9s | 1m 26s | 43s |
| 25 GB (mid-size) | 1h 11m | 35m 47s | 7m 9s | 3m 35s |
| 60 GB (AAA) | 2h 51m | 1h 25m | 17m 11s | 8m 35s |
| 150 GB (AAA + packs) | 7h 9m | 3h 34m | 42m 57s | 21m 28s |
Why Steam sometimes downloads slower than your plan
Steam decompresses game data while downloading, which can bottleneck on slower CPUs and hard drives — on gigabit connections the disk is often the limit, not the network. Server load on launch days, Wi-Fi interference, and other devices sharing the connection all shave off speed too.
Speeding up Steam downloads
- In Steam settings, check that the download region matches your location and remove any bandwidth limit.
- Install games to an SSD — decompression on a hard drive can halve effective download speed on fast connections.
- Close games and streaming apps; Steam pauses downloads by default while a game is running.
- Use Ethernet for big downloads; even good Wi-Fi loses 20–40% of throughput in typical homes.