How To Fix Epic Games Slow Download Speed

Your Epic Games downloads are likely crawling because the launcher is throttling your connection or struggling to resolve paths through your current DNS. You can fix this by clearing out stale cache files and manually forcing the launcher to use more concurrent connections.

Why this happens

The Epic Games launcher often defaults to conservative connection settings or gets hung up on corrupted temporary cache files. Changing your DNS and modifying the Engine configuration file forces the client to open more stable, high-speed paths to the download servers.

Steps

1. 01
   Open the Epic Games launcher, click your profile icon in the top right, and select Settings.
2. 02
   Locate the Downloads and Installs section and open Download Settings.
3. 03
   Set the Limit Download Speeds values to 0 to disable throttling; if the speed does not improve, change these values to 10000.
4. 04
   Fully close the Epic Games launcher, ensuring you also exit it from the taskbar system tray.
5. 05
   Press the Windows key + R, type %localappdata% into the Run box, and press Enter.
6. 06
   Navigate to the EpicGamesLauncher folder, open Saved, and delete any folders labeled webcache followed by numbers.
7. 07
   Open the Config folder, then Windows, and right-click the Engine file to open it with Notepad.
8. 08
   Clear all text in the file, paste the configuration settings below, then go to File and Save.
9. 09
   Open the Control Panel, set View by to Large icons, and select Network and Sharing Center.
10. 10
    Click Change adapter settings, right-click your active network connection, and select Properties.
11. 11
    Double-click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and select Use the following DNS server addresses.
12. 12
    Enter 8.8.8.8 as the Preferred DNS server and 8.8.4.4 as the Alternate DNS server, then click OK.
13. 13
    Restart the Epic Games launcher to apply the changes and resume your download at full speed.

Still not working?

If your speeds are still low after these steps, check if your router has Quality of Service (QoS) settings enabled, as these can prioritize specific traffic and inadvertently throttle gaming clients. If you are on a metered connection or using a VPN, disable those temporarily to see if the bottleneck lies with your ISP or the network tunnel.

Frequently asked questions

Will changing the Engine.ini file break my game?

No, this file only modifies the launcher's connection behavior. If you notice any issues, you can simply delete the file and restart the launcher to let it regenerate a fresh, default version.

Is it safe to use 8.8.8.8 as a DNS?

Yes, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are Google's public DNS servers. They are frequently used by technicians to bypass slow ISP-provided DNS servers which often fail to resolve game server addresses efficiently.