Charting Amazon Leo’s Progress vs Starlink
- Caleb Henry
- 13 hours ago
- 2 min read
November 25, 2025 - Written by Caleb Henry
A common question we get at Quilty Space is to compare Amazon Leo (formerly Kuiper) to Starlink. More specifically, people want to know if Amazon is lagging Starlink, and if so, by how much.
At the surface level, there is a clear gap. Starlink has more than 8 million subscribers running on a network of more than 8,500 satellites. Amazon Leo is pre-service with 150 satellites in orbit.
But things get interesting when comparing both constellations using their ITU filing as the start date. Applying for spectrum with the UN agency is the first step towards realizing a constellation, making it an effective place to start the clock at T-0.
The ITU received Starlink’s first filing, named STEAM-1, on June 27, 2014. It took the operator 6.3 years to go from that filing to the “Better than Nothing” beta service in October 2020.
For Amazon Leo, the ITU first received a filing under the name USASAT-NGSO-8A on March 26, 2019. Amazon Leo announced its enterprise beta service today, Nov. 24, 2025, or 6.3 years after filing.
Technical note: national regulators apply on behalf of their host constellations, so the FCC filled for Amazon, and Norway’s Nkom filed for Starlink. Companies don’t file directly.
From this, we can see that while Amazon Leo got a later start, it is progressing at almost the same speed as Starlink, lagging by a mere four months. Amazon Leo made up significant time in 2025, going from first production satellite launch to beta in seven months, nearly twice as fast as Starlink. And Amazon Leo satellites already feature laser crosslinks, a technology Starlink introduced about two and a half years after its first production launch.
Amazon Leo still has more steps to go until it reaches Starlink’s present status. Major milestones include activating full commercial service and achieving global coverage (including polar). Not owning a launch vehicle like SpaceX remains a challenge. But the operator is moving at a compelling speed, and with the heft of parent company Amazon behind it, is very, very real. To learn more about Amazon Leo and its strengths and weaknesses versus other constellations, check out our report here.