What Starlink’s 99.9% SLA Covers, and What a Business Still Has to Plan For
Starlink’s business service level agreement (SLA) promises 99.9% uptime every billing period on Local Priority and Global Priority plans, with a 20% service credit when Starlink misses the target. On the Speedify Starlink Index for 29 September to 12 October 2026, Starlink users on Speedify measured 96.77% working time, about 46 minutes a day offline.
Both numbers can be true. The SLA counts only outages of a minute or longer, measured up to Starlink’s point of presence, where the Starlink network meets the internet. The Speedify Starlink Index counts every dropout a device sees, whatever the cause: the dropouts a card terminal or a video call at the site would notice.
The short version: 99.9% still allows about 43 minutes of outage in a 30-day month. An SLA credit refunds part of a bill; keeping card terminals, calls and cloud systems online through those minutes takes a second internet connection.
This article covers what Starlink’s SLA counts, what the Speedify Starlink Index counts, why both numbers can be true, and how to plan for the downtime the SLA doesn’t cover. Speedify is an app that combines Starlink with other internet connections, such as 4G/5G cellular, and measures every internet connection Speedify carries; the Speedify Starlink Index publishes those measurements.
The live Speedify Starlink Index updates every day, so today’s Speedify Starlink Index figures will differ from the numbers in this article.
What Starlink’s Business SLA Counts as an Outage
Starlink’s own help article sets out the terms:
- 99.9% uptime in each complete billing period, for Local Priority and Global Priority plans.
- Only outages of 60 seconds or longer count.
- An outage means the Starlink dish can’t send or receive pings from servers at a Starlink point of presence (PoP), where the Starlink network meets the internet.
- The Starlink dish has to be powered on with an unobstructed view of the sky, and a Standard dish has to be aligned within 5 degrees.
- Outages during power save mode, software updates or rate-limited service don’t count, and terminals on data pools are excluded.
- A miss earns a fixed 20% credit on that period’s recurring fees, however long the downtime ran.
The terms measure the Starlink network’s availability up to the PoP. The same terms say nothing about the site’s LAN, Wi-Fi, power or the path beyond the PoP, so the SLA doesn’t tell you whether a laptop in the back office stayed online.
What the Speedify Starlink Index Counts as Downtime
The Speedify Starlink Index counts working time from the device running Speedify, over Starlink, to a Speedify server and back. Dropouts shorter than a minute count. So do a Wi-Fi problem in the building, an obstructed dish, a dish mid-update, and a Starlink network outage. How Speedify measures Starlink covers the method.
On that measure, Starlink users on Speedify were offline 46 minutes a day from 29 September to 12 October 2026. Over a 30-day month, 46 minutes a day adds up to 23 hours.
Why Starlink’s 99.9% SLA and 96.77% Measured Uptime Can Both Be True
The two yardsticks measure different things, and nothing on the Speedify Starlink Index suggests Starlink misses the SLA. Short dropouts under a minute, obstruction and misalignment, local Wi-Fi and software updates all count on the Speedify Starlink Index and none count toward the SLA.
The SLA conditions are also strict compared with real installations. From 29 September to 12 October 2026, 22.1% of Starlink dishes on the Speedify Starlink Index were within 5 degrees of the direction Starlink prefers, and 24.5% had no sky blocked at all. The Speedify Starlink Index can’t tell which dishes sit on Priority plans, but the figures show how many real installations fall outside the SLA’s assumptions.
A Starlink dish’s own ping drop rate comes closest to the SLA’s definition, since the SLA defines an outage by pings to the Starlink PoP. Half of 3,510 dishes dropped no pings; one in ten dropped more than 2.86%.
What 46 Minutes a Day of Starlink Downtime Means for a Business Site
The Speedify Starlink Index can’t say when in the day the minutes fall, and the average mixes every kind of Starlink user, from a fixed dish at an office (fixed dishes averaged 37 minutes a day) to a Starlink Mini on a truck. A fixed business dish with a clear view of the sky will likely do better than the 46-minute average.
Even so, a business should plan for short dropouts every day. Card terminals that need a live internet connection, VoIP phones, video calls and cloud point-of-sale systems all notice a 30-second gap that no SLA credits.
Planning for the Starlink Downtime the SLA Doesn’t Cover
The fix is a second internet connection with no shared failure path: 4G/5G cellular, a DSL or fiber line, or the corporate network at a larger site. On the Speedify Starlink Index, 71.8% of Starlink users on Speedify run a second internet connection, and 11.1% of those second internet connections are corporate networks.
Speedify combines Starlink with the other internet connections at a site and schedules traffic, packet by packet, onto whichever internet connection is answering. Sessions survive the switch because applications see the public IP address of the Speedify server, not Starlink’s, so a Starlink dropout doesn’t drop the call or the card payment. Speedify for Starlink covers site setups, and internet failover for MSP clients covers managing many sites.
What the Speedify Starlink Index Can’t Tell You About Starlink SLAs
Which plan each user is on. The Speedify Starlink Index doesn’t know which Starlink users are on Priority plans, so the Speedify Starlink Index can’t check anyone’s SLA.
How many minutes the SLA would have counted. The Speedify Starlink Index doesn’t split dropouts by length, so outages over a minute can’t be separated from shorter dropouts.
A typical business. The Speedify Starlink Index counts Speedify users, a mix of homes, vehicles and businesses.
Plan Your Starlink Failover With Speedify
Running Starlink at a store, clinic or field site? Talk to the Speedify team about combining Starlink with 4G/5G cellular or a wired line, at one site or many.
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