Higher or Lower

How to play

1. 1One card shows a number: a network's fastest tier, what Netflix needs for 4K, the year a service launched. The other card hides its number.
2. 2Call it: is the hidden value higher or lower (later or earlier for years)? Tap the button, or press the up and down arrow keys.
3. 3The number counts up and the source appears. Every network or provider figure links to the page on this site that publishes it.
4. 4Daily: ten calls, the same ten for everyone in South Africa, seven or more to win and keep your streak.
5. 5Endless: the hidden card becomes the next shown card. Chain as many correct calls as you can — one wrong call ends the run.

Where the numbers come from

The network cards use the speed tiers listed on this site's own network pages — the fastest and slowest download tier and the fastest upload tier each operator advertises. Provider cards use founding years and Fair Use thresholds from our provider profiles. Nothing editorial is asked: no ratings, no review counts, no prices.

Everything else is a published figure: a vendor's own bandwidth recommendation, a technical standard's link rate, disc capacities, well-documented launch dates, or plain arithmetic such as how long a 50 GB game takes at a full 100 Mbps. Light-speed and satellite questions are physics minimums and say so on the reveal.

Why the numbers matter

Most of the bandwidth cards are the figures people should know before buying a line: Netflix asks for 15 Mbps for 4K, a Zoom call sends under 4 Mbps, cloud gaming wants 20. Put those beside a 100 Mbps fibre tier and the question of what speed a household needs answers itself. What internet speed do you actually need? →

The Fair Use cards are the other number worth knowing: an “uncapped” plan with a 400 or 500 GB threshold is a different product from one without. Uncapped and Fair Use policies explained →

Frequently asked questions

Where do the numbers in Higher or Lower come from?

Three places, and every reveal tells you which. Network speed tiers, founding years and Fair Use thresholds are read from the same provider dataset that powers this site's comparison and network pages, and the reveal links to the page that publishes the figure. Streaming and gaming bandwidth figures are the recommendations the vendors themselves publish (Netflix, YouTube, Zoom, Xbox and so on). Everything else is a published technical standard, plain arithmetic such as how long a 50 GB download takes at 100 Mbps, or physics such as the speed of light in fibre.

Why are there no questions about ratings, review counts or prices?

Because they are not facts a quiz should test you on. The star ratings and review counts on the comparison pages are aggregated editorial figures, so 'which provider is rated higher?' would really be asking 'what does this site think?'. Prices are only ever published here when they have been read from a provider's own page and timestamped, and most providers have no currently verified figure. Both were left out deliberately; the game only asks about numbers that can be checked.

Is the daily puzzle the same for everyone?

Yes. The ten questions are generated from the date in South African Standard Time, so everyone in the country gets the same puzzle and a new one appears at midnight SAST. The bank holds more than 2,400 valid comparisons split into five categories, and the daily walks each category in a seeded order, so no pair of cards comes back for at least 81 days.

What is the difference between daily and endless mode?

Daily is ten calls, one attempt per day, scored out of ten; seven or more counts as a win for your streak. Endless is the classic higher-or-lower run: each number you get right becomes the next reference card, the category changes every few questions, and one wrong call ends the run. Your daily results and your best endless streak are stored separately in your browser, and nothing is sent to a server.

Why are the network tiers not what my ISP sells?

The game uses the typical speed tiers listed on this site's network pages for each fibre operator or mobile network, which is where the reveal links. ISPs package those tiers differently, some operators offer additional tiers in specific areas, and a mobile network's 5G plan speed is a cap rather than a line speed. Treat the numbers as the network's published ladder, not as a quote for your address.

How can a light-speed or download-time question be fair?

Because they are calculated, not guessed. Light travels through optical fibre at about 204,000 km per second, so 1,000 km takes 4.9 milliseconds, and a geostationary satellite round trip cannot be shorter than 477 milliseconds. Download times use the line rate with no overhead: a 1 GB file is 8,000 megabits, so it takes 80 seconds at a full 100 Mbps. Real connections add overhead and routing, which is why the reveal labels these as minimums.