For years, satellite broadband meant one thing: a slow, high-latency link you tolerated only because nothing else reached your site. That has changed completely. Both Starlink and Amazon Leo are low-earth-orbit (LEO) constellations delivering fast, low-latency broadband — a different world from the old geostationary services (here's why LEO changed everything). The question now isn't "satellite or not?" — it's "which LEO constellation, and how do I run it as a proper business connection?"
The honest starting point: these two are not at the same stage. Starlink (from SpaceX) is mature and widely deployed today. Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) is newer and ramping up — promising on paper, but still rolling out (here's our primer on Amazon Leo). This comparison is deliberately balanced, and everything below moves fast, so treat figures as indicative rather than final.
Maturity and availability today
This is the clearest difference right now. Starlink is live and proven, with a large installed base across the UK and a mature ordering, hardware and support process. If you need a connection this month, it is the ready option.
Amazon Leo is earlier in its journey. The constellation and service are still being built out, so availability, terminal supply and support maturity will vary by region and over time. It's an exciting entrant with serious backing — but for a site that needs connectivity today, "coming soon" isn't the same as "available now."
Speed and terminals
Both constellations aim squarely at broadband-class performance, but the hardware families differ.
Starlink offers a range of terminals — Standard, Mini and higher-capacity business dishes — with real-world speeds that comfortably support everyday business use, and higher tiers for demanding sites. Amazon Leo has indicated a tiered terminal line-up: a compact Nano around 100 Mbps, a Pro around 400 Mbps, and an Ultra reaching up to roughly 1 Gbps. Those are indicative headline figures — actual throughput depends on plan, congestion and location — but the intent is clear: match or exceed what LEO already delivers.
Latency
Because both fly satellites a few hundred kilometres up rather than 35,000 km out, both deliver low latency in the same broad order — typically tens of milliseconds, not the half-second lag of old GEO services. For voice, video, VPNs and remote desktop, either constellation should feel like a normal fixed line rather than a satellite one. Latency, in other words, is unlikely to be the deciding factor between them.
Enterprise and cloud integration
Here Amazon Leo has a genuine potential differentiator. Because it comes from Amazon, it is designed with private routing into AWS — the ability to carry traffic from the satellite terminal into Amazon's cloud without traversing the public internet. For AWS-heavy enterprises, that's a meaningful architectural advantage for security, performance and data-egress design.
Starlink integrates perfectly well into enterprise networks too, and there are established patterns for VPNs, SD-WAN and private connectivity on top of it. But if your workloads live in AWS, Leo's native path is worth watching closely as it matures.
Static IP and business features
One practical caveat applies to both: by default, LEO services typically place you behind CGNAT (carrier-grade NAT), meaning you don't get a routable public address. That breaks inbound VPNs, remote access, hosted services and many monitoring setups. This is a solvable problem — RCG layers a static IP over the top so your site behaves like any other business connection (more on static IP for Starlink, and the same approach applies to Leo). If business-grade addressing matters to you, plan for it regardless of which constellation you choose.
Cost and contracts
Starlink's pricing and plans are published and well understood, which makes budgeting straightforward. Amazon Leo's commercial terms are still emerging, so any cost comparison today is provisional. Our advice is caution: don't build a business case on figures that haven't settled. As Leo's pricing firms up, the competitive picture between the two could shift quickly.
Coverage and UK availability
Starlink is available across the UK now. Amazon Leo coverage is expanding as the constellation grows and is best described as "coming" for many UK sites rather than universally available today. For time-sensitive projects, that availability gap often matters more than any spec-sheet difference.
The RCG take
We're vendor-independent, so we won't crown a blanket winner — because there isn't one. The right choice genuinely depends on your site: what's available where you are, whether you're AWS-centric, your timeline, and your budget. Today, Starlink's maturity makes it the pragmatic pick for most sites; Amazon Leo is one to watch and, in time, may be the better fit for AWS-heavy enterprises.
But the smartest design is often not either/or — it's both. Running two diverse bearers with automatic failover (Starlink plus Leo, or a LEO link plus 4G/5G) gives you resilience that a single connection never can (see our guides to backup & failover and Starlink vs 4G/5G failover). If one path degrades, traffic moves to the other without anyone noticing.
Whichever route you take, RCG delivers it managed — with a static IP, automatic failover and 24/7 monitoring, so satellite behaves like a proper business connection rather than a consumer dish. Explore Amazon Leo and rural internet connectivity, and we'll design the right mix for your site.