Why Your Steam Downloads Are Slow & How To Speed Them Up

You buy a new game on sale, hit install, and Steam crawls along like it is running on dial‑up. Your internet plan looks fine, speed tests look fine, but that progress bar barely moves. What is going on?

The short answer is that Steam is usually not "broken", but something in the chain between Steam’s servers and your drive is holding things back. The good news is that a few settings and checks fix the problem for a lot of people.

Below, we will walk through why Steam feels slow and what you can actually change to make it faster.

Steam Settings That Actually Make Downloads Faster

Before you start rebooting everything you own, fix the easy stuff inside Steam. Most real speed gains for people come from just a few settings.

1. Pick a better download region

1. Open Steam.

2. Go to Steam › Settings › Downloads.

3. Under Download Region, choose another nearby region. If your country has several, try each. If not, pick a close neighbor.

4. Click OK, then restart Steam.

Test a download after each change. Sometimes a region slightly further away but less busy gives better real‑world speed than the closest one.

2. Remove any bandwidth limits

In the same Downloads settings page

1. Look for Download Restrictions.

2. Make sure Limit bandwidth to is unchecked, or set high enough that it is above what your connection can realistically reach.

3. If you want Steam to download any time, uncheck limits that restrict it to certain hours.

If you like to browse or watch videos while Steam downloads, you can leave a modest cap here (for example, half of your maximum speed) so your connection does not feel choked. If your only goal is getting the game ASAP, remove the cap.

3. Clear Steam’s download cache

The download cache can sometimes get corrupted and cause weird behavior or slowdowns. Clearing it forces Steam to rebuild it.

1. Go to Steam › Settings › Downloads.

2. Click Clear Download Cache.

3. Steam will restart and make you sign in again.

After logging back in, start the download again and see if speeds are more consistent.

4. Pause, resume, or restart Steam

It sounds basic, but it helps more often than you would expect.

Try this small sequence

• Pause the download for 10 - 20 seconds, then Resume.

• If that does nothing, fully exit Steam, then reopen it and resume.

• If your PC has been on for days, a quick reboot can clear up stalled network or disk processes.

5. Check Steam’s update and throttling behavior

In Settings › Downloads you can also

• Turn off options that throttle downloads while streaming or playing

• Adjust when Steam is allowed to download updates for other games

If you often find Steam grabbing updates in the background while you are trying to download something big, tightening these options will stop it from fighting with itself for bandwidth.

If you go through the Steam settings above, you will fix the problem in most cases. When nothing changes and every other service on your PC is fast, the bottleneck is likely on Steam’s end. In that case, all you can do is keep using the best region you find and let the client download while you do something else away from the progress bar.