For the first time in the history of nPerf’s mobile internet barometer for Kenya, Safaricom has claimed the top spot across every single performance indicator. The French crowdsourced measurement platform’s annual report, covering the period from April 2025 to March 2026, places Safaricom decisively ahead of Airtel on speed, responsiveness, and everyday quality-of-experience tests.
Safaricom finished with an overall nPerf score of 48,015 points. Airtel came in at 30,156. That is a gap of nearly 18,000 points, which is not a narrow margin by any measure.
What the numbers actually say
Average download speed on Safaricom’s mobile network landed at 30.55 Mb/s. Airtel’s came in at 13.20 Mb/s. That is more than twice as fast. On 4G specifically, Safaricom recorded 24.23 Mb/s against Airtel’s 13.73 Mb/s.
Upload speeds tell a similar story. Safaricom averaged 9.67 Mb/s while Airtel managed 4.74 Mb/s. Latency, which is the delay before data starts moving and matters a lot for video calls and gaming, came in at 49.62 ms for Safaricom and 83.06 ms for Airtel. Lower is better.
Web browsing success rates were 40.76% for Safaricom versus 34.19% for Airtel. YouTube streaming success was 67.17% against 60.68%. Across every category that nPerf measures, Safaricom was in front.
The distribution of results also matters. Safaricom delivered “excellent” download speeds (above 25 Mb/s) on 53% of its 4G tests. For Airtel, that figure was 28%, with 45% of its tests actually falling into the “low” category below 10 Mb/s.
Context the headline does not tell you
This is being presented as a historic first for Safaricom, and it is, but there is important context. In the previous nPerf cycle, Airtel was the only operator that qualified for the Kenya report, which meant it held every ranking by default. nPerf only includes providers whose test share exceeds 5% of the total sample. With Safaricom now accounting for 68% of all tests and Airtel 32%, this is effectively the first time both operators have been benchmarked against each other in the same cycle.
The sample skew is worth noting. Safaricom has a much larger user base and a more urban-heavy one, which almost certainly influences the averages. Communications Authority data puts Safaricom’s SIM market share at 66.8% and mobile broadband share at 64.3% as of December 2025, so the 68% test share roughly tracks. Still, real user experience on each network is what nPerf is trying to capture, and across nearly 78,000 measurements combined, the trend is clear enough.
Safaricom vs Airtel: the 2026 mobile internet scorecard
Crowdsourced from real user speed tests on Android and iOS. Two operators qualified this year. Safaricom topped every single category.
A gap of 17,859 nPoints separates the two operators. On 4G alone, the score is Safaricom 45,706 against Airtel 31,681.
Only operators above a 5% test share are included. Telkom Kenya and JTL did not qualify for the 2026 mobile barometer, effectively confirming Kenya’s mobile internet market as a two-player race.
Beyond the averages: what Kenya’s mobile internet actually feels like
Distribution of results, evening slowdowns, and the year-on-year shifts that explain why Safaricom pulled ahead while Airtel improved in places.
Averages hide the spread. Here is what proportion of tests fell into each quality bucket.
nPerf separates “busy hours” (6 PM to 11 PM) from idle hours. Here is how much each network slows down when households come online.
Airtel is not standing still
It would be easy to read this report as a clean defeat for Airtel, but the data shows meaningful progress in places.
Upload speed rose 17% year on year, from 4.06 Mb/s to 4.74 Mb/s. Latency dropped from 97.61 ms to 83.06 ms, which is better network responsiveness. On 4G, upload speed reached 5.15 Mb/s. These are genuine infrastructure gains.
The problem is download speed. Airtel’s overall average fell from 14.52 Mb/s to 13.20 Mb/s. The 4G download figure also slipped from 14.64 Mb/s to 13.73 Mb/s. Small declines, but in the wrong direction, and happening while Safaricom was pulling further ahead.
During peak evening hours between 6 PM and 11 PM, when most households are online, Airtel’s average download drops to 10.11 Mb/s. Safaricom’s busy-hour figure is 26.59 Mb/s, still comfortably ahead of Airtel’s idle-hour speeds.
How this fits the broader picture
This is the second big nPerf barometer out of Kenya in April 2026. The earlier one covered fixed internet and placed JTL’s Faiba ahead of Safaricom, Zuku, VGG Connect and Airtel on home broadband. On mobile, though, Safaricom’s lead is not really in dispute. Ookla’s H1 2025 Speedtest data also showed Safaricom running median speeds more than 2.4 times faster than Airtel, with 5G speeds nearly three times faster.
Safaricom launched 5G in October 2022 and now operates more than 1,100 sites across all 47 counties. Airtel launched 5G in mid-2023 with a smaller footprint that has been expanding. That infrastructure gap is starting to show up in independent speed tests.
Renaud Keradec, President of nPerf, described the Kenyan mobile market as entering a new phase, “with rising download speeds across the board and a reshaping of the competitive rankings that reflects genuine network investment by operators.”
For subscribers, the practical takeaway is straightforward. If you are picking a network purely on raw mobile performance based on crowdsourced data, Safaricom is currently the stronger choice. If price, bundle generosity, or rollover data matter more to you, Airtel still has a case to make, but it will need to reverse that download trend before the next barometer lands.
