Data Usage Calculator
Estimate monthly data use, and find what is really consuming it.
What you provide
Leave at 0 if the connection is unlimited.
Result
About 104 GB over 30 days
Video dominates any realistic estimate, and the gap between quality levels is enormous: standard definition uses around 0.5 GB an hour, 1080p around 1.5 GB, and 4K around 7 GB. Everything else is rounding by comparison. These figures are typical rather than exact, since services vary their bitrate with the content and with your connection, and a busy scene uses several times what a static one does.
- Web browsing1 h a day at roughly 60 MB an hour
- 1.8 GB
- Social media scrolling0.5 h a day at roughly 150 MB an hour
- 2.3 GB
- Video, 1080p2 h a day at roughly 1500 MB an hour
- 90.0 GB
- Downloads and updates
- 10 GB
- Per day
- 3.13 GB
- Over 30 days
- 104.0 GB
What this cannot tell you
- An estimate from the hours you enter and typical consumption rates. It does not measure any device or read your usage from a provider.
- Streaming services vary their bitrate with the content and with your connection, so a busy scene can use several times what a static one does. Treat the totals as indicative.
Take this with you
How this calculation works
Each activity is multiplied by a typical hourly consumption figure and by the hours you enter, then scaled over the period. The rates come from what services actually deliver rather than from headline maximums: standard definition video around 0.5 GB an hour, 1080p around 1.5, and 4K around 7. Downloads and updates are added as a flat figure since they do not scale with time in any useful way.
What the results mean
- Per activity
- How much each thing you do contributes over the whole period. The ordering usually surprises people, since video dwarfs everything else.
- Over the period
- The total against your allowance. Add a margin, since estimates of your own hours tend to be optimistic.
- Spare or over
- How much room is left. If it is tight, the streaming quality setting is where the easy savings are.
Common problems and fixes
- The real bill is far higher than the estimate
- Look for automatic video first. Social feeds that autoplay video, and smart televisions that play trailers on the home screen, consume data continuously without anyone watching. After that, check for cloud photo backup and device updates, which move several gigabytes at a time and choose their own moment to do it.
- Data disappears when nobody is using anything
- Background sync, backups and updates. On a metered connection, mark it as metered in the operating system settings so updates wait, turn off automatic cloud photo upload over mobile data, and check any security camera or doorbell, since continuous video upload can consume more than every other device on a household connection combined.
Frequently asked questions
How much data does streaming actually use?
Roughly 0.5 GB an hour for standard definition, 1.5 GB for 1080p and 7 GB for 4K, though services adapt to your connection so the same programme can use different amounts on different days. Switching a service to its data-saver setting is the single most effective change you can make to a monthly total.
Do video calls use as much as streaming?
Less than people expect, usually under 1 GB an hour for a good HD call in each direction. What they need is a stable connection rather than a large allowance, since call quality is far more sensitive to jitter and packet loss than to raw bandwidth.
Does online gaming use much data?
Playing uses very little, typically under 100 MB an hour, because the game only exchanges positions and events. Downloading the game is the expensive part, and modern titles can be 100 GB or more with patches of several gigabytes arriving regularly.
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