Early tests show Apple's Private Relay feature does not live up to speed promises

Apple introduced a new iOS 15 feature at WWDC called Private Relay. The feature is designed to frustrate companies tracking you on the internet by routing your data via two servers, one belonging to Apple and the other to a 3rd party.

When Apple introduced the service they promised it would not reduce your connection speed or “compromise your performance“, something which was frankly hard to believe. Now early tests have shown that promise was indeed too good to be true.

Google employee Thomas Steiner has tested the service and showed these results with and without the proxy service.

The numbers show download speeds dropped from 400 Mb/sec to 180 Mb/sec while latency increased from an enviable 3ms to a laggy 78ms.

Given the Tor-like routing system in use, the numbers are not unexpected. Apple has however made lofty promises, and it should be borne in mind that the service being tested is still in beta, so the company may still manage to pull a rabbit out of the hat at launch time.