How much data does streaming use?
Video is by far the biggest consumer of data at home and on mobile. This calculator multiplies the data rate of an activity by the hours per day, the days per month and the number of people or screens, and compares the monthly total with your data cap.
The formulas
- Data per day = GB per hour × hours per day × people
- Data per month = data per day × days per month
- Share of the cap = monthly data ÷ cap
- Hours until the cap = cap ÷ (GB per hour × people)
Worked example
A household watches 3 hours of HD video a day, 30 days a month, on one screen.
- Per day: 3 GB per hour × 3 h = 9 GB.
- Per month: 9 × 30 = 270 GB.
- Against a typical 1.2 TB home internet cap: 22.5% of the allowance.
- The cap would allow about 400 hours of HD video a month.
On a 50 GB mobile plan, the same viewing would run out of data in under 6 days.
Typical data rates
| Activity | Data per hour |
|---|---|
| Music, normal quality | about 0.05 GB |
| Music, high quality (320 kbps) | about 0.15 GB |
| Lossless music | 0.6 GB or more |
| Video call, HD | about 0.8 GB |
| Video, standard definition | about 1 GB |
| Video, HD 1080p | about 3 GB |
| Video, 4K Ultra HD | about 7 GB |
Services adjust bitrate to your connection and the content, so actual usage can vary by 30% or more either way. Animated shows usually use less than action films at the same resolution.
Home internet and mobile caps
Many US home internet plans include a data cap, often 1.2 TB per month, with fees or slowdowns beyond it. Mobile plans are tighter: even “unlimited” plans often lower video quality or slow down after a certain amount of premium data.
Saving data
- Set video quality to standard or “data saver” on mobile.
- Download shows and playlists over Wi-Fi before leaving home.
- Turn off autoplay so the next episode does not start by itself.
- A 4K stream on a phone screen looks no different from HD but uses more than twice the data.