LoRa vs Wi-Fi mesh

Two families

LoRa meshes (Meshtastic, MeshCore, Reticulum over an RNode) use a long-range, low-rate modulation in sub-GHz licence-free bands. A node is a small battery-powered board with a phone or built-in screen as the interface.

Wi-Fi meshes (NYC Mesh, Freifunk, Guifi.net and similar) use 802.11 radios on rooftops, usually with directional antennas for the long links. They are closer to a conventional ISP network built from commodity radios and routers. See how mesh routing works for how the two differ in forwarding.

Data rate

LoRa data rate depends on spreading factor (SF) and bandwidth (BW): higher SF reaches farther and is slower. Meshtastic's documented presets, as listed on its radio-settings page:

The Turbo presets use 500 kHz bandwidth, which Meshtastic says "is not legal to use in all regions"; its docs state they are unavailable in EU_868, the region UK nodes use. So in the UK the usable range is about 0.34 to 10.94 kbps, with Short Fast at the top. These are theoretical maximum rates: Meshtastic notes they do not account for packet headers, hops and retransmissions. (Presets and rates as listed on the radio-settings page, 29 October 2026.)

More generally, LoRa data rates span 0.3 to 27 kbit/s (Wikipedia). A Meshtastic text payload is "roughly 200 bytes", within a 239-byte ceiling.

For Wi-Fi, one manufacturer rating: Ubiquiti's store lists its airMAX PowerBeam 5AC line, 5 GHz point-to-point dish bridges, with a "450+ Mbps real TCP/IP throughput rate" (the 500 and 620 models; checked 29 October 2026). That is a manufacturer rating for a clear, aligned link, not a guarantee. Even at the fastest preset available in the UK (10.94 kbps), the gap to that figure is more than four orders of magnitude.

Range

• LoRa: Wikipedia gives a practical range of about 10 km, and a community range record of 331 km (Wikipedia's Meshtastic article; a claim, not a guarantee). Real urban ranges are far shorter. LocalMesh, a UK MeshCore project, reports 500 m to 2 km between nodes in built-up areas and 5 to 15 km from elevated positions; that is its own claim and is not independently checked.
• Wi-Fi point-to-point: range depends on line of sight, antenna gain and legal power. The manufacturer page above does not state a range, and we have no sourced range figure to give. Wireless Networking in the Developing World covers the physics, including line of sight, in detail.

Height matters more than power for both. See antenna placement.

Power

What can be said without figures: LoRa boards, especially those with low-power nRF52 chips, are suited to battery and solar operation (see power). A Wi-Fi point-to-point radio typically needs a mains or PoE supply. If you need a node to run unattended through a power cut, that difference shapes the design; see resilience in practice.

UK legal limits (LoRa)

Meshtastic's EU_868 region sits in the 869.4 to 869.65 MHz slot and applies a 10% duty cycle, so these limits cap how much a UK node can transmit. Regional ceilings vary: the US region is 902 to 928 MHz, and ANZ 915 to 928 MHz. These are Meshtastic firmware ceilings rather than national laws.

A word on 2.4 GHz: Meshtastic's hardware docs list SX1280 (2.4 GHz) LoRa devices but "strongly" recommend SX126x or LR11xx parts.

Comparison

Which should you use?

• Want to message friends when the phone network is down, or share location on a walk: LoRa. See flash Meshtastic or flash MeshCore.
• Want to replace or supplement a broadband connection: only a Wi-Fi style network can, and only where one exists nearby. See join a community Wi-Fi mesh.
• Not sure: which mesh is right for you, then what you can actually do.

Both families are limited in different ways. LoRa cannot carry web pages or video. Wi-Fi meshes can, but need infrastructure, volunteers and usually an upstream provider; see the ISP as a single point of failure.