Amazon Leo vs Starlink vs OneWeb: A Full Comparison of Coverage, Terminals, Latency, Pricing, Enterprise Use and Limits

Starlink has roughly 11,190 working satellites in orbit. Amazon Leo has nearly 400. Eutelsat OneWeb has 600+, flying twice as high as either of them.

Those three numbers explain most of what you need to know about low Earth orbit broadband at the end of 2026. One network is a mature global utility, one is a well-funded challenger that hasn't opened commercial service, and one is a government-backed enterprise specialist with no consumer product at all.

This full comparison covers constellation size and launch status, coverage, terminals, latency, pricing where it's public, aviation, maritime and government use, the FCC and ITU rules that shape all three, and the honest limits of each. Last updated: November 10, 2026.

Key Takeaways

• Starlink leads on every deployed metric: about 11,190 working satellites and 13.6 million consumer subscribers as of Q3 2026.
• Amazon Leo has launched nearly 400 satellites and must reach 3,232 by July 30, 2029 under its FCC license.
• Eutelsat OneWeb runs 600+ satellites at 1,200 km and sells only through partners, mainly to enterprise, government, aviation and maritime buyers.
• Leo's Ultra terminal is rated at up to 1 Gbps down and 400 Mbps up, the highest published spec of the three, but it isn't commercially live yet.
• OneWeb's LEO revenue grew 69.5% to €297 million in FY 2025-26, while Starlink booked $5,248 million of Connectivity revenue in one quarter.

Amazon Leo vs Starlink vs OneWeb at a glance

Let's start with the side-by-side. Every figure below comes from the operator, its regulator or an independent satellite catalog, and each is dated because all three networks change monthly.

Source: Amazon mission updates and Amazon Leo FAQ; Jonathan McDowell's Starlink statistics (updated November 9, 2026); Fierce Network on Starlink markets; FCC orders for SpaceX Gen2 and Amazon Leo; Eutelsat OneWeb constellation page.

The table hides one thing that matters more than any single row. Starlink and Leo are both building for consumers first and businesses second. OneWeb has never sold to households directly and doesn't plan to.

Constellation size and launch status

Starlink: the scale benchmark

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell's catalog, updated November 9, 2026, counts 13,096 Starlink satellites launched, 11,204 still in orbit and 11,190 working. That's more than every other active LEO broadband fleet combined.

SpaceX also has the regulatory headroom to keep going. In January 2026 the FCC approved another 7,500 Gen2 satellites, bringing authorized Gen2 to 15,000, and required SpaceX to launch 50% of the newly authorized satellites by December 1, 2028.

Starship is the next step. SpaceX says Flight 14 delivered 26 Starlink V3 satellites, about 10x the downlink capacity added by a Falcon 9 Starlink launch. Inside Deep Tech's SpaceX Starship V3 full guide covers why that cadence is still the big unknown.

Amazon Leo: production solved, launches are the bottleneck

Amazon says it has launched nearly 400 satellites across 14 missions, making Leo the third-largest constellation in orbit. Its factory finished its 1,000th satellite in early September, so hundreds of flight-ready spacecraft are waiting for rockets.

The next two launches show the plan. ULA's first Leo Vulcan mission, LV-01, targets November 13 with 40 satellites, the first of 38 Vulcan launches that Amazon says will carry 1,500+ first-generation satellites. Arianespace's LE-04 follows no earlier than November 23 with 36.

Blue Origin is the other big variable. The background on that rocket, including its May 2026 pad explosion, is in Inside Deep Tech's New Glenn full guide.

Eutelsat OneWeb: complete, and now replenishing

OneWeb finished its first-generation network years ago. Eutelsat describes it as 600+ satellites in 12 orbital planes at 1,200 km. Its problem isn't building out. It's replacing early satellites as they age.

In September 2026 Eutelsat ordered 229 more satellites from Airbus, on top of 440 already procured, for 669 new OneWeb satellites in total. Airbus says they'll progressively replace early batches reaching the end of their operational life.

Coverage: where each network actually works

Starlink is the only one of the three with broad consumer coverage today. Fierce Network reports SpaceX said on its Q3 2026 call that Starlink reaches 13.6 million consumer subscribers in 174 markets.

OneWeb's polar orbits give it true global reach, including the Arctic, which is why it's popular with governments and shipping. Eutelsat says its network brings internet to every corner of the planet on land, at sea and in the air. It doesn't publish a country count, and service in each country depends on partners and landing rights.

Amazon Leo has no general commercial coverage yet. Amazon says it expects to quickly expand service after an initial rollout later in 2026, and its FAQ says it plans to serve most countries around the globe. With fewer than 400 satellites up, early coverage will be regional and capacity-limited.

Terminals: consumer and enterprise hardware compared

Hardware is where Amazon has made its clearest technical bet. All three Leo customer terminals are flat phased arrays, and Amazon publishes peak speeds for each one.

Source: Amazon Leo FAQ and Leo Ultra announcement; Amazon Leo Aviation Antenna; Starlink residential, aviation and maritime pages; Eutelsat OneWeb LEO equipment.

Amazon calls Leo Ultra the fastest customer terminal in production. That's a spec-sheet claim until customers use it at scale on a denser constellation, but it's a meaningful one for enterprises that upload video, sensor data or backups.

OneWeb's catalog looks very different. Eutelsat lists dual-parabolic and flat-panel terminals for rural ISPs, merchant ships, offshore platforms and fishing fleets, plus a military-grade foldable unit and a manpack for defence and first responders. It's built for integrators, not for unboxing at home.

Latency: what the physics and the published data say

Altitude sets the floor. Light covers about 300 km per millisecond, so a signal going up to a satellite and back down to a gateway, then back again, travels roughly four times the satellite's altitude before any routing or queueing.

By Inside Deep Tech's arithmetic, that minimum is about 8 ms for Amazon Leo at 630 km and about 16 ms for OneWeb at 1,200 km, measured straight overhead. Real networks add gateway distance, ground routing and congestion, which usually matter more than the orbit.

Only SpaceX publishes measured latency in detail. Its latency white paper says US median latency fell from 48.5 ms to 33 ms, with a goal of a stable 20 ms median, and that each space leg takes 1.8 to 3.6 ms.

Amazon and Eutelsat both describe their networks as low latency but haven't published a measured median comparable to SpaceX's. Until they do, treat any precise Leo or OneWeb latency figure you see as an estimate, not a spec.

Pricing: what's public and what isn't

Starlink is the only one with public consumer pricing. When Inside Deep Tech checked on November 10, 2026, Starlink's US residential page listed plans at $50, $80 and $120 a month, with no upfront hardware cost in select areas. Prices and availability vary by address.

SpaceX's filings show where pricing is heading. Starlink's consumer ARPU was $69 a month in Q3 2026, down from $83 a year earlier, as SpaceX expanded internationally and added lower-priced plans.

Amazon hasn't announced Leo consumer or enterprise prices. Its FAQ only lists terminal speeds and says service will roll out more widely in 2026. Any Leo price you see on a comparison site is speculation.

OneWeb pricing is negotiated through distribution partners and depends on terminal, committed information rate and contract length. Eutelsat says it works with certified distribution partners and offers SLAs with committed and maximum information rate options.

Enterprise, government, aviation and maritime

Here's where the comparison gets interesting, because it's the one market where all three compete today or soon.

Aviation

Starlink is far ahead in the air. SpaceX reported over 3,800 aircraft equipped with Starlink as of September 30, 2026. Its enterprise and government revenue reached $2,127 million in the quarter.

Amazon Leo's airline deals start later. JetBlue plans Leo-powered Fly-Fi on select aircraft beginning in 2027, and Delta plans an initial 500 aircraft starting in 2028. Amazon's aviation antenna is rated at up to 1 Gbps down and 400 Mbps up, with no moving parts.

OneWeb plays mostly through multi-orbit offers. Eutelsat's FY 2025-26 results cite Japan Airlines selecting a solution that combines OneWeb LEO capacity with GEO capabilities, and strong Aero growth across both orbits.

Maritime

Starlink sells maritime service directly and through partners. OneWeb relies on distributors: Eutelsat named new partnerships with AST Networks and Tototheo Global to expand OneWeb maritime distribution, though it called the overall Maritime contribution more limited as GEO softened.

Amazon hasn't published a dedicated maritime terminal. Its FAQ lists Nano, Pro and Ultra, and its JetBlue announcement says the network is meant to serve planes, ships and other vehicles. Ships are on the roadmap, but no maritime product is.

Government and defence

OneWeb's strongest card is sovereignty. Eutelsat's Government Services revenue rose 17.7% like-for-like to €235 million, helped by the French CENTAURE contract (up to €350 million over eight years, €138 million firm) and service delivered in Ukraine.

That role should grow with IRIS², the EU's planned 290-satellite multi-orbit constellation targeting governmental and commercial services by 2030. Eutelsat expects the IRIS² negotiations to confirm its place in Europe's LEO segment.

Starlink serves governments too, including disaster response, but European and allied buyers increasingly want a non-US option. Amazon Leo's government pitch leans on AWS: enterprise sites can connect to AWS through Direct to AWS without touching the public internet, as Inside Deep Tech's Amazon Leo full guide explains.

Amazon Leo: A Full Guide to the Project Kuiper Constellation, Terminals, Launches, FCC Deadline and Limits

How the former Project Kuiper works, Nano, Pro and Ultra terminals, the launch backlog, the FCC 2029 deadline and the honest limits.

Inside Deep Tech

Direct to phone: the next front

Starlink already runs Direct to Cell with partner carriers, using satellites that connect to ordinary phones. Amazon is building toward the same market through a planned direct-to-device system and its pending Globalstar deal, both covered in the Amazon Leo guide.

OneWeb isn't a phone network. Eutelsat's focus is broadband to terminals plus positioning and timing services such as AstraPNT. For the wider satellite-to-mobile trend, see Inside Deep Tech's 7 space tech trends of 2026.

Regulatory: FCC licenses and ITU milestones

Every LEO operator answers to two clocks. The ITU's Resolution 35 requires non-geostationary systems to deploy 10% of a filing within two years, 50% within five and 100% within seven after the regulatory deadline, or shrink the filing. National regulators like the FCC add their own milestones.

Amazon Leo's waiver

Amazon's FCC license required 1,616 satellites by July 30, 2026 and 3,232 by July 30, 2029. Amazon told the FCC it expected about 700 by the first deadline. The Space Bureau granted a limited waiver with conditions in June 2026 but kept the 2029 milestone, and warned that missing it would reduce the authorized constellation.

Starlink's expansion

SpaceX's January 2026 order raised authorized Gen2 to 15,000 satellites, let it use lower shells and more frequency bands, and set a December 1, 2028 milestone for half of the new satellites. SpaceX's challenge is cadence, not permission.

OneWeb's US market access

OneWeb is UK-licensed and serves the US through FCC market access. A 2023 FCC order approved a revised 716-satellite configuration at about 1,200 km and deferred OneWeb's request to expand to 6,372 satellites. The FCC also leaned on ITU findings on EPFD limits, the interference rules that protect geostationary networks.

The money behind each network

Scale shows up in revenue. SpaceX reported Connectivity revenue of $5,248 million in Q3 2026 alone, up 69% year over year, with segment income from operations of $2,367 million.

Eutelsat's whole LEO business booked €297 million in FY 2025-26, 25% of group revenue, and guides to LEO growth of about 30% in FY 2026-27. A €5 billion refinancing package underpins its LEO capex.

Amazon doesn't break out Leo revenue or spending. Its investors have to judge the program by launch cadence and contracts, a theme Inside Deep Tech's space tech investment trends guide covers in more depth.

Which network fits which buyer

• Households and small businesses: Starlink is the only real option in most markets today. Recheck Amazon Leo after its consumer launch, when pricing and coverage are public.
• Enterprises already on AWS: put Amazon Leo on the shortlist for 2027 pilots. Direct to AWS and the Leo Ultra terminal are designed for you, but ask for coverage maps and an SLA.
• Airlines: Starlink has scale now. Leo deals start in 2027 and 2028. OneWeb fits carriers that want a multi-orbit package with GEO.
• Shipping and offshore: Starlink and OneWeb both sell today. OneWeb's partner model suits fleets that want a managed service and polar reach.
• European governments and defence: OneWeb, backed by Eutelsat's state shareholders and the IRIS² roadmap, is the sovereign choice. Many will run it alongside Starlink for resilience.

Inside Deep Tech's take

Honest limits of this comparison

• Satellite counts move weekly. Use the McDowell catalog and Amazon's mission log for current numbers; the figures here are dated November 2026.
• Leo performance is unproven at scale. Peak terminal speeds are Amazon's specs. Real-world throughput on a sub-400 satellite network isn't public.
• Latency comparisons are uneven. Only SpaceX publishes measured medians. The Leo and OneWeb figures here are physics floors, not measurements.
• Pricing is mostly private. Starlink posts consumer prices; Amazon hasn't announced any; OneWeb is priced per contract through partners.
• Regulatory outcomes can change. The FCC can shrink Leo's license if it misses 2029, and OneWeb's expansion to 6,372 satellites remains deferred in the US.

FAQ

What to watch next

• Whether LV-01 flies on November 13 and LV-02 follows within weeks, the first real test of Leo's cadence.
• Amazon Leo's first public consumer price and country list.
• Starship V3 flight rate and how much Starlink capacity each launch adds, per SpaceX's quarterly results.
• First launches of OneWeb's Airbus-built replacement satellites and the outcome of IRIS² negotiations.
• Any FCC filing from Amazon showing it's on track for the 2029 milestone.

The LEO broadband market will look different by 2028. Starlink will be bigger, OneWeb will have a refreshed fleet, and Amazon Leo will either be a true second network or a cautionary tale about launch supply. The next 12 months of Vulcan and New Glenn flights decide which.