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If you’re an avid gamer, you’ve come across one trouble that most gamers have come across: high ping. Whether you’re playing MMORPGs or FPS games, ping heavily impacts your gameplay. It could mean the difference between you getting off that one skill and winning, or having that 50 millisecond (ms) delay and losing. You can’t begin to imagine how many times I’ve missed a kill or couldn’t use that one skill that just came off cooldown - simply because of high ping.
I’m sure you can all relate to this. Playing games means there’s always some kind of ping. Professional gamers go the extra mile to reduce ping, and so should you if you want to be a top-tier gamer or even just to have a more enjoyable gaming experience.
Ping reducers are programs that run in parallel with your games. By providing a direct connection or another faster route to the game servers, these programs are able to lower your ping in games. If you’re wondering how to reduce ping, you can either optimize bounces on your local NSP (managed by you and your ISP), or you can optimize your game provider’s network.
In most cases, you will not be able to optimize your game provider’s network. Modern ping reducers will attempt to optimize your computer to send the packets in the most efficient way while trying to minimize the bounces within your local NSP. Besides reducing ping, these apps also create more stable connections to reduce jitters and ping spikes which reduce things like rubber banding. Keep in mind, sometimes ping reducers will NOT be able to reduce your ping as the alternative route they provide could be less efficient than your default one. Ping reducers are also not a silver bullet to lower ping. For connections with terrible routing a 30-40% reduction in ping is possible but most of the time ping is only reduced by 10% or so. Connection stability though can be improved which oftentimes improves the gameplay experience even more so than ping.
Some ping reducers also monitor your activity in real-time and provide live network insights to reduce the latency more efficiently. So, what are the best ping reducers that work the best? The ping reducers below are the most popular ones on the net. Keep in mind that some people will get better results with one over another. Most of these have free trials, so if they don't work well for you just cancel during the free trial period.
Best Ping Reducers for Gaming
On average, WTFast reduces game ping by 30-60%. WTFast gives you a “VIP connection” to the game servers directly, so you aren’t routed through different servers to play your game. This reduces ping or latency, and also helps reduce jitter, spikes and packet loss. WTFast also prioritizes your connection to the game vs. your connection to other programs you may be running. With partnerships and hardware integration with companies like MSI, ASUS and GIGABYTE, it’s no wonder they’re the leading ping reducer for all things gaming. WTFast works on a monthly subscription-basis, with a 17% discount if you subscribe annually. With only $8.25/mo, you can reduce ping and improve your gameplay. They also offer a 14-day free trial, risk free - so if you want to lower your ping in games, this is worth checking out.
NoPing is a popular ping reducer that's designed to work out of the box for over 600 games from MMORPGs like World of Warcraft to FPS games like Valorant, Fortnite, and CSGO. The NoPing software calculates the best route between your client and the game server and works to re-route traffic in the most efficient way possible, reducing ping and even disconnection issues. The best part about NoPing is that it offers a 3 day free trial that doesn't require a credit card to activate, so testing out NoPing is totally free. Unlike other ping reducers, NoPing also has an option to boost fps in games like Black Desert Online and World of Warcraft by optimizing settings. Given that this is one of the few ping reducers that doesn't require a credit card to try it out, there's absolutely no reason not to give it a chance. Pricing wise it's also one of the cheapest on this list at $5.33/mo for a 12 month plan or $6.90/mo on a monthly plan.
Outfox users can expect to outperform the average gamer with an optimized gaming network. This ping reducer routes your internet traffic through its own network while showing a live session graph of your connection performance. Outfox is also built by the same makers of VyprVPN, which we’ve recommended in our article on the best VPNs for gaming. With a brilliant engineering team like this, you can expect world-class performance as well. Like other ping reducers, Outfox offers a 14-day free trial. It’s the most expensive out of our list at $9.95/mo, but you can expect top-tier performance and support from the team.
Haste boasts its own network infrastructure with private fiber optic links and mesh network of relay servers. By dumping the old, outdated VPN technology, Haste was able to build a ping reducer from the ground up. When you use the Haste client, you join the Haste network which leads your connection to the servers with the fastest possible route. Haste is a next-gen ping reducer because as you use Haste, it learns about your network paths between you and the game servers. This means you’ll be receiving a better connection each time. You can sign up and get a 14-day trial with no credit card required. It’s priced at $120/year or $15/mo and despite being a bit pricier than other ping reducers, it's our favorite. Why? Because it just works. We've tested countless ping reducers and for us Haste has delivered the best performance. They also regularly update their supported games list to include all popular titles. They even have newer titles like Apex Legends on there. Since there's a free trial, there's no reason not to give it a try.
Mudfish is a favorite amongst many MMORPG players. I know It's been recommended on Final Fantasy XIV's subreddit several times and countless people have reported good results with it. Perhaps Mudfish's best selling point is its price - instead of paying monthly, people pay based on how much data they use and since gaming requires minimal banwidth a $5 spend on Mudfish can last up to a year easily. They also support countless games right out of the box with basic configuration. They're owned and operated by the South Korean company Mudfish Networks, and if anyone knows MMORPGs it's the South Koreans.
At $29.88/year, Pingzapper comes out to $2.49/mo. It seems like a huge bargain, but the performance you’ll be getting isn’t nearly as good as WTFast or Outfox from my experience. You can predict the quality of the program by comparing their website with the rest. It does seem to work and I can see a difference in ping with the MMOs I regularly play. The beauty of PingZapper though is that you can try it without having to enter a credit card or providing any kind of payment information. It's the only true free trial on this list that doesn't need payment information.
Kill Ping simply boosts your game performance. With over 100 servers across 30+ locations around the world, Kill Ping allows you to pick your own server or you can let it auto-pick the best server for you. They also boast a guaranteed uptime of 99.99% with tier 1 support every time. Some players have seen a ping reduction of 60% with Kill Ping. For a limited time they are offering a 2-year plan for only $40, which comes out to a measly $1.66/mo. If you’re running an internet cafe or a cool gaming basement, maybe you’d also need a multi-login plan. Kill Ping seems to be quite the affordable ping reducer for enterprise needs.
How Do Ping Reducers Work?
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At times, your ISP may provide a sub-optimal routing path for you. This is because ISPs want to route your traffic through cheaper and less efficient servers to save money. For example, if you live in California, your ISP may route you to a server in another state - far away from the game server. The time that it takes for the data to travel determines your ping. If you are wondering how to reduce ping, this is the bottleneck.
With a ping reducer, your game data is routed nearest to the game server. This drastically reduces the time that the data takes to travel, thus being the best way to reduce ping in games.
Typical internet routing works like this: your computer broadcasts packets of data using your router. The router “routes” the packets to different Network Service Providers (NSP), then to the game server and eventually back to your computer. This routing system will have multiple transfer points depending on the NSP and the game networks.
One way to see the routing in action is if you open up your command prompt and type in this command: “ping vie.valve.net” Once it finishes and outputs the approximate round trip times, type in this command: “tracert vie.valve.net”
The first command, “ping,” simply showed the average ping times while the second command “tracert,” showed all the routes it takes to reach Valve’s game server. As you can see, there are multiple steps needed for the data to be sent out from your router to reaching the final destination: the game server.
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While these two methods output the response times, these figures are not entirely accurate in terms of how your game packets will go. “Ping” and “tracert” use the response time of an ICMP packet and doesn’t accurately portray the in-game UDP packets you receive from the game servers, but still shows the routing process.
Lastly, these PingReducers are not meant to be workarounds for IP blocks/restrictions. VPNs are better suited for that purpose. If you're looking to get around an IP block check out out guide for the best VPNs for gaming.