How to Monitor Your Internet Speed in Realtime in Windows 10

—   Aryan K on Jan 20, 2022
Last Modified : Mar 19, 2024

It is always smart and helpful to keep an eye on the internet speed or bandwidth in realtime so that you can know if any application on your computer is making heavy usage of your internet bandwidth in the background especially when you're on limited internet plan and want to save some unnecessary bandwidth usage.

The windows operating system does not have any ready-made application to monitor internet speed in realtime, though it has a system to prevent misuse of monitored bandwidth which can be enabled through 'Network & Internet Settings' but I wanted an application with which I can monitor the internet speed in the taskbar and I found out many tools and programs but there were only two of them that suited my purpose.

In this post, I have shared two of the most reliable and useful real-time internet speed monitoring utilities that sits on your taskbar and displays bandwidth usage in realtime. Rather if you want to monitor internet traffic orignating from applications on your PC take a look at:

DU Meter

DU Meter is one of the most reliable and extensive real-time bandwidth monitoring software that helps you monitor your internet usage statistics. It also offers a toolbar that can be enabled within the taskbar that displays internet speed in your chosen unit Kbps or Mpbs, The program is highly customizable and also offers a graph of usage data and speeds

Please note that DU Meter is a paid app, you can still try it for a limited period of time. It's actively maintained and supports windows 10.

NetSpeed Monitor

Netspeed Monitor is a handy network activity monitoring application similar to DU meter. It also has a taskbar interface to display usage statistics in real-time, configurable layouts that displays upload and download speeds. It is a lightweight application.

The thing is NetSpeed Monitor is old and does not support windows 10 but you can still use it on Windows 10 via the compatibility mode. I have been using it this way for a long time and it hasn't caused an issue ever since then. The guide below describes it well.

Installing NetSpeed Monitor

  • First download NetSpeed Monitor, choose a distribution that best suits your OS architecture.
  • Double click and run the application and see if it supports your OS. If not Right-click and choose Troubleshoot Compatibility and then install the application.
  • Right-click on the taskbar and choose Toolbars and enable NetSpeed Monitor
  • Choose the network interface, you'd like to monitor eg. Ethernet, Wifi, etc.
  • Now you can see it starts displaying the upload and download speeds in realtime.

You can also change the units Kbps/Mbps to KBps or MBps by right-clicking the text and choosing the configuration. You can also customize the layout of the text to make it a bit bolder.

Concluding Remarks

So in the end, these are very useful tools that help you monitor your background data consumption. If you know of any such wonderful tools similar to these here that are simply easy to use and can be integrated on the taskbar. Please mention those in the comments below and don't forget to provide your feedback if you find these useful.

Author's Picture
Aryan K
Creator Metabust.com

I am a Full stack developer and love to build stuffs with code. Metabust is my personal space I created to share my knowledge and experience on a wide range of things and connect with you people, If you're a developer you'll find it useful.