Which frigate in Eve has the fastest sub-warp speed after fittings and skills?

Question

In Eve, one can easily look up the base stats for various ships by checking their info pages from the market.

The interceptors are probably the fastest ship class in the game, but it's hard to figure out which interceptor is the fastest after skills and fittings are taken into account.

So assuming the best possible max speed fittings and skills, which ship is the fastest?

Answer 1

The Dramiel is the fastest Frigate in EVE.

The Claw is the fastest of the Interceptor group, but a Dramiel running an MWD is faster because of its lower mass, since MWD speed boost is affected by ship mass.

Things that affect speed are

• Base speed of ship
• Low slots (using Overdrive Injector II¹)
• Mid slot (using one 1MN MicroWarpdrive II)
• Rigs (using Small Auxiliary Thrusters II¹)
• Navigation Skill
• Acceleration Skill (when using the MWD)
• Ship mass (when using MWD)
• Implant bonuses (e.g. the Snake Set)²
• Leadership and Gang Assist bonuses²

Here's a table with the calculated speeds (base ship speed, max fitted/rigged and MWD, each without skill bonus and finally with all skills at level V³):

Here are the results as CSV. They were calculated from a subset of the CCP database export with this Python script, using the speed formulas from the top speed calculation guide and the Aenigma formula for bonus stacking penalties. Some calculated speeds were cross-checked against Pyfa.

¹ The speed bonuses from the Overdrive modules and Rigs are subject to severe stacking penalties, making it fairly useless to cram more than 2-3 of these in your ship in total. However for the purpose of finding the fastest ship it was assumed that all ships had their low slots full of Overdrive modules and their Rig slots full of Auxiliary Thrusters. This is not a sensible build to fly around in though.

² These bonuses affect the velocity directly and therefore don't matter for a ship comparison. They were not taken into account here.

³ Due to neither implants nor Leadership/Gang bonuses being applied, this is not the fastest these ships can go.

Answer 2

The fastest T1 Frigate is Pumisher with 50MN (medium-size) MWD This will be 8136 m/s (11954 m/s hot) for omega clone and 7224 m/s (10596 m/s hot) for alpha clone, assuming no drug, no boosters, no implants and only meta or T2 modules

[Punisher, F: cap-stable, $7.5M]

Overdrive Injector System II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

50MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
Cap Recharger II

[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Ancillary Current Router II

Answer 3

The punisher In Jiaming's answer is nice, but with the right skills you can fit it this way for 8476m/s without overdrive (omega clone). Eking out a little over 300 more m/s. Of course, it also costs a bit more

[Punisher, Go Fast 29m isk]
Navy Micro Auxiliary Power Core
Navy Micro Auxiliary Power Core
Overdrive Injector System II
Capacitor Flux Coil II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Small Cap Battery II


Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Capacitor Control Circuit II
Small Ancillary Current Router II

Answer 4

It might surprise you to know that the fastest ship in Eve might not be a frigate, but actually a destroyer. Meet, the Pontifex.

The Pontifex is a Command Destroyer, which is a T2 variant of the Dragoon. Because of it's fitting space and module layout, it is capable of cramming enough powergrid, capacitor, and speed modules to achieve some blistering speeds, outrunning just about anything else you can think of.

For a cool 4 billion ISK (as of early 2023), the Pontifex can nearly reach 13,851 m/s cold or 19,887 m/s overheated. And it's cap stable, being capable of traveling at that nearly 14k m/s speed forever, or until you run out of Rapid Deployment Charges for the Skirmish Command Burst (although, having over 24,000 of them should last a good long while). Even when the Skirmish charges run out, the ship still moves at nearly 11k m/s cold or over 16k m/s hot, which is still faster than just about anything.

Most of the cost for this is tied up in the implants. Shedding the high-grade Snake set and other implants, the ship is around a much more manageable 400 million ISK. It does drop the speed down to 8,386 m/s cold and 12,322 m/s hot however.

On the other hand, this ship can go even faster with an abyssal rolled deadspace 50MN Microwarpdrive if money (ISK) is really no object and raw speed is all that matters. A max-rolled power-grid and velocity bonus Abyssal Corelum A-Type 50MN MWD, besides being mind-numbingly expensive, pushes the Pontifex to 15,400 m/s cold and 22,143 m/s hot.

Here's the fit with just non-abyssal modules, but including implants.

[Pontifex, I am Speed]

Dark Blood Power Diagnostic System
Navy Micro Auxiliary Power Core
Navy Micro Auxiliary Power Core
Overdrive Injector System II
Overdrive Injector System II

50MN Digital Booster Microwarpdrive
Imperial Navy Cap Recharger
Imperial Navy Cap Recharger

Skirmish Command Burst II
Festival Launcher
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Small Ancillary Current Router II
Small Ancillary Current Router II


High-grade Snake Alpha
High-grade Snake Beta
High-grade Snake Gamma
High-grade Snake Delta
High-grade Snake Epsilon
High-grade Snake Omega
Zor's Custom Navigation Hyper-Link
Skirmish Command Mindlink


Rapid Deployment Charge x24320

Zoom zoom!