A fast mirror ranking tool that finds the best mirrors for your Linux distribution. It uses submarine cable and internet exchange data to intelligently hop between countries and discover fast mirrors in ~30 seconds.

• Quick Start
• Installation
• Supported Distributions
• Usage
• Common Options
• Algorithm
• Examples
• Troubleshooting
• Exit Codes
• License

# Arch Linux
rate-mirrors arch | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

# Manjaro
rate-mirrors manjaro | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

# With backup
export TMPFILE="$(mktemp)"; \
    rate-mirrors --save=$TMPFILE arch --max-delay=21600 \
    && sudo mv /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-backup \
    && sudo mv $TMPFILE /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

# See all options
rate-mirrors --help

rate-mirrors [OPTIONS] <SUBCOMMAND> [SUBCOMMAND-OPTIONS]

• Run rate-mirrors --help to see base options
• Run rate-mirrors <subcommand> --help to see subcommand-specific options
• The tool doesn't need root; use --allow-root if you must run as root

The tool uses:

• Submarine cable connections data
• Internet exchange locations and counts per country
• Continental groupings for geographic proximity

1. Fetch mirrors from Arch Linux Mirror Status
2. Filter out incomplete or outdated mirrors
3. Sort by mirror score
4. Starting from entry country, find neighbor countries using:
   • Major internet hubs (first two jumps)
   • Geographic proximity (every jump)
5. Test mirrors from each country, track fastest and lowest-latency
6. Jump to countries of best mirrors, repeat
7. After max jumps, re-test top mirrors sequentially and output final ranking

Data attribution: Submarine cable and IX data from TeleGeography.

alias ua-drop-caches='sudo paccache -rk3; yay -Sc --aur --noconfirm'
alias ua-update-all='export TMPFILE="$(mktemp)"; \
    sudo true; \
    rate-mirrors --save=$TMPFILE arch --max-delay=21600 \
      && sudo mv /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist-backup \
      && sudo mv $TMPFILE /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist \
      && ua-drop-caches \
      && yay -Syyu --noconfirm'

Notes:

• sudo true prompts for password at the start
• paccache is from pacman-contrib
• yay is an AUR helper

Add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc, then run ua-update-all.

# STARTED AT: 2025-08-31 14:04:21.217766 +03:00
# ARGS: rate-mirrors arch
# FETCHED MIRRORS: 1147
# MIRRORS LEFT AFTER FILTERING: 730
# JUMP #1
# EXPLORING US
#     + NEIGHBOR UK (by HubsFirst)
#     + NEIGHBOR DE (by DistanceFirst)
# [DE] SpeedTestResult { speed: 29.0 MB/s; elapsed: 1.00s; connection_time: 79ms }
# ...
# RE-TESTING TOP MIRRORS
# [SE] SpeedTestResult { speed: 64.6 MB/s; elapsed: 745ms; connection_time: 122ms }
# [BY] SpeedTestResult { speed: 61.2 MB/s; elapsed: 786ms; connection_time: 16ms }
# ==== RESULTS (top re-tested) ====
#   1. [SE] 64.6 MB/s -> https://mirror.osbeck.com/archlinux/
#   2. [BY] 61.2 MB/s -> http://mirror.datacenter.by/pub/archlinux/
#   3. [LT] 54.1 MB/s -> http://mirrors.atviras.lt/archlinux/
# FINISHED AT: 2025-08-31 14:04:40.296066 +03:00
Server = https://mirror.osbeck.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirror.datacenter.by/pub/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirrors.atviras.lt/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

For custom mirror lists or unsupported distributions:

# Input format (tab-separated):
# URL
# COUNTRY<tab>URL
# URL<tab>COUNTRY

cat mirrors.txt | rate-mirrors --concurrency=40 stdin \
    --path-to-test="extra/os/x86_64/extra.files" \
    --path-to-return='$repo/os/$arch' \
    --comment-prefix="# " \
    --output-prefix="Server = "

Example mirrors.txt:

https://mirror-a.example.org/repo/
US	https://mirror-b.example.org/repo/
https://mirror-c.example.org/repo/	DE

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

_{Previously known as "Rate Arch Mirrors" (changed in v0.4.0). View old README}