The Star Trek franchise has become so wide-reaching that it has become difficult to name a definitive anything within the universe as a whole. Between shows like Discovery, which visit the far future, and Picard, which has only recently been showcasing the most modern era of Trek yet set in the main timeline, there are a lot of variations to talk about with any list.
Fortunately, the fastest Federation starships remain a fairly doable matter. Seen developing over the course of hundreds of years, the Starfleet Federation continues creating newer, often speedier ships as they continue exploring further out into the galaxy.
8 USS Monitor
Known for being the one to send in at a time of rescue or when Starfleet is in need of an important delivery, the USS Monitor has appeared on several occasions and could be a great ship to follow in a future Star Trek show.
Seen throughout The Next Generation and in Star Trek video games, the Monitor is a ship known for getting in and getting out fast. Although it isn’t built for maintaining the sort of long journeys that many of the other Federation starships handle, this allows the USS Monitor to focus on quick speeds for short-distance journeys, making it an unnaturally nimble and speedy ship for the Federation.
7 USS Discovery
It seems strange that a ship built in the early days of Starfleet would continue on as one of the fastest the Federation has ever seen, making this feel inconsistent. However, the reasons for this are obvious, the setting of Star Trek: Discovery would later be destroyed by a wormhole. For this reason, and this reason alone, the secrets unlocked by Discovery would be left hundreds of years before being rediscovered.
But in fact, the Discovery was one of the secretive Crossfield Class that was testing a number of experimental ideas, including the spore drive, which could help Starfleet ships travel faster than ever before. This was a huge success, though Starfleet wouldn’t know enough about it to continue with these projects, and perhaps shouldn't have given the unethical nature of some of them.
6 USS Fearless
The Fearless is mentioned a number of times throughout The Next Generation as a hugely important ship that, like the Enterprise-D, makes a number of new discoveries and is constantly mapping out freshly discovered galaxies. This capability was down to a combination of natural speed and upgrades given to it by Kosinski.
One of the great geniuses in the field of propulsion shown throughout the entire Star Trek franchise, Kosinski was able to upgrade several ships with the kind of experimental ideas that made them faster, consistently, for the rest of their operation. The Fearless was fortunate to be one of those ships.
5 USS Ajax
Another ship that received the mighty benefits of a Kosinski upgrading session, the USS Ajax was also spoken of and seen in The Next Generation as a ship that became a great deal quicker than most of the ships available to Starfleet due to the work that Kosinski personally put into upgrading its systems.
Unlike the Fearless, the USS Ajax was revealed to be a part of the Apollo Class of Federation ships which haven’t been seen as often in Star Trek media. Despite not having as many great feats as the Fearless, the Ajax seems to have been just as impressive in terms of speed.
4 USS Voyager
Obviously, managing to be the first ship to do a number of things in the Star Trek Universe, it is unsurprising that the USS Voyager is also one of the fastest ships out there. It was among the first Federation ships built with the capability of traveling at Warp-9, helping extend the reach of the Federation.
Further than that, being added to and changed over the course of the enormous seven-year journey it undertook, the Voyager is hugely impressive. This leaves the Voyager easy to insert in the annals of Starfleet history as one of the great ships of its, or any, known time in terms of speed capability.
3 USS Enterprise-E
There are many great ships in the history of Starfleet, and a lot of them are named Enterprise. But, in spite of ships like the Enterprise-A having been run by Montgomery Scott in the engine room for years, and achieving great speeds successfully as a result, he still didn’t build it.
But he did build the Enterprise-E, which took all the best pieces of the various previous versions of the ship, including the Enterprise-D, and made it the first Starfleet ship that could reach Warp 9.9. This proved to be hugely useful to the Next Generation cast over the course of the great films they spent inside the walls of this mighty vessel.
2 USS Prometheus
Of course, going at Warp 9.9 is impressive, until a ship manages 9.99. Some starships have attempted to reach Warp 10 before, and while some have been successful, achieving this speed usually ends in catastrophe. So in terms of successfully achieved speeds, Warp 9.99 is the best that can be done.
And Warp 9.99 has been achieved by Prometheus. This experimental ship was launched as the fastest vehicle in the fleet, and it is unknown if there ever came a time when another would take that mantle from this sleekly designed ship.
1 USS Vengeance
The dastardly, one-of-a-kind ship created during Star Trek: Into Darkness threw a spanner in the works of figuring out speeds for many Star Trek fans. Having successfully caught up to the Enterprise while it was traveling at warp speeds, and fired upon it, the Vengeance could easily be the fastest and most powerful ship that’s ever been seen in the Federation.
It is difficult to determine what capabilities such a ship would need to have in order to make this sort of chase successfully, but it seems that the Vengeance managed it comfortably as well, proving that it is probably one of the quickest vessels ever seen in the Star Trek Universe.