How Much Data Do You Need? Streaming, Gaming & More Explained

Lauren Hannula Managing Editor

Updated 30 September 2025

In this Guide

Popular Apps Data Usage
Checking Your Data Usage
Best Phone Data Plans

Article Summary

Most apps and activities consume between 60MB and 300MB of data in an hour.
TikTok and Instagram are the most data-hungry apps, eating up 840MB and 720MB/hour, respectively.
Web browsing, podcasts, and light online gaming consume the least amount of hourly data.
You can utilize WiFi to save on mobile data usage, or increase your phone plan size to support your favorite apps.

Data is such an important part of our modern lives, but it is also the most expensive component of our wireless plans. So how much data does your phone plan need for the apps you regularly use, and which apps use the most data?

In this guide, we'll run through just how much cellular data you can expect to go through for some of your favorite apps and online activities, as well as help you work out how much monthly data will support your Instagram and/or TikTok addiction.

Data Usage for Popular Apps and Services

Not all mobile apps are created equal—the more complicated and connected its tasks, the higher its data consumption will be. After all, chatting with friends on Facebook Live is quite a bit different than using your phone's built-in calculator.

Here's a quick overview of how much mobile data you'll burn through in an hour of using some popular apps and services. You'll also see the risk of blowing through your data cap, and how much data you'll want if you're regularly sinking your data into that service.

	Data per Hour	Risk	Suggested Plan
Online gaming	From 3MB		At least 1GB
Podcasts	Approx. 60MB		At least 2GB
Web Browsing	Approx. 60MB		At least 2GB
FaceTime	Approx. 85MB		At least 3GB
Facebook	Approx. 80MB		At least 3GB
Music Streaming	Up to 150MB		At least 5GB
Snapchat	Approx. 160MB		At least 5GB
Facebook Video	Approx. 160MB		At least 5GB
YouTube	Approx. 300MB		Unlimited
Netflix	From 250MB		Unlimited
Lossless Music Streaming (Tidal)	Approx. 640MB		Unlimited
Instagram	Approx. 720MB		Unlimited
TikTok	Approx. 840MB		Unlimited

Web Browsing Data Usage

Approximately 60MB per hour

The amount of data you use when surfing the information highway will vary from website to website. Naturally, image-heavy sites will take a bigger toll on your cell phone data cap than text-only pages. In a mixed test, we found that you can expect to use somewhere around 60MB in an hour of browsing.

FaceTime Data Usage

Approximately 85MB per hour

FaceTime is one of the most popular video calling apps around—mostly due to the fact that it's preinstalled on every iPhone. Fortunately, it doesn't use too much mobile data. We found you'll tend to go through 85MB of data per hour of video call time.

Facebook Data Usage

Approximately 80MB per hour for browsing, 160MB per hour for video

When using the official Facebook app, you can expect to use around 80MB of data per hour. This is slightly more than plain old web browsing, which isn't surprising, given how photo-heavy Facebook is these days. If you're watching video through Facebook, your mobile data usage will jump to around 160MB per hour—still less than what you'd use when streaming on YouTube or Netflix. Disabling auto-play on Facebook can help keep you from unintentionally using up data.

If you're hoping to cut down on your Facebook data usage, make you can set videos to "never auto-play" under "Videos and Photos" in the settings menu.

Snapchat Data Usage

Approximately 160MB per hour

Snapchat isn't an app that most people spend a consecutive chunk of time on—which is how its data usage can sneak up on you if you're a regular user of app. If you were to spend an hour intently sending and receiving Snaps, you could expect to use about 160MB of cellular data in that time. Sending or receiving a single Snap will use about 1MB of data, so consider how many times you actually open the app in a given day to get an idea of how data-heavy Snapchat might be for you.

Instagram Data Usage

Approximately 720MB per hour

It might surprise you, but Instagram is probably one of the most data intensive apps you have installed on your smartphone. In our tests, we consistently burned through 60MB in around five minutes, which works out to be 720MB an hour. In fact, we were so shocked to find out how much data Instagram was wasting, we repeated our test five more times and got the exact same results. Then again, with its additions of Stories, Instagram Live, and Instagram TV, perhaps we should have predicted that the app would have heavily increased its usage since its humble photo-only debut.

If you're just opening the app to quick scroll through your timeline to your friends' latest photos, you shouldn't use quite as much mobile data as we did. But if you're actively browsing Instagram checking out photos, stories, and videos, you can go through a lot of data very quickly.

TikTok Data Usage

Approximately 840MB per hour

TikTok is the new darling of the social media scene, sparking dance crazes and meme-able challenges wordlwide. Those viral videos come at a serious cost to your data plan, however: in its default setting, the app consumes a whopping 840MB per hour.

While you can't scale back your video quality to help reduce your usage, you can reclaim a little over half that data by putting the app in Data Saver mode, which automatically decreases your video resolution and makes you wait a bit longer between video loads. These tweaks drop your hourly data consumption to just 360MB—on par with other video streaming services like YouTube.

Your best bet for using such a data-hungry app is to use it over WiFi as much as possible.

YouTube Data Usage

Approximately 300MB per hour

If you're watching YouTube on your smartphone on a 3G or 4G LTE network, you won't have access to any quality options. This is a good thing; YouTube is looking out for you. You can expect to use around 300MB per hour of video watched.

YouTube now offers live TV streaming through YouTube TV. This service will use up similar cellular data, but the higher the quality of your stream, the more data you'll be using.

Netflix Data Usage

From 250MB per hour

Netflix has three quality settings for when you're on a mobile connection. Low will use 250MB/hour, medium will use 500MB/hour, and high will use 1GB/hour. Netflix does, however, let you save content to your cell phone for offline viewing—so if you're worried about using too much data while streaming shows, you can always download an episode or two while you're connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Music Streaming Data Usage

Approximately 150MB per hour

Worried about whether your love for Pandora Radio is killing your data package? Music streaming data usage will depend on the given app or service. However, in most cases, you'll never use more than 144MB when streaming music at 320kps (roughly 12MB a song). Spotify lets you dial down the quality even further, to either 96kpbs or 160kps, which cuts your hourly cell phone data usage to 43MB and 72MB respectively.

Apple Music, on the other hand, only streams at a single quality—256kps—which is equivalent to 155MB an hour. Google Play Music's default stream quality is 320kbps, but it adjusts depending on your connection strength. If you're getting a weak signal, you may find Play Music using less mobile data per song.

If you've got a subscription to a lossless music streaming service, like Tidal, expect to use around 640MB per hour. Lossless streaming is the audio equivalent of HD streaming for video, which accounts for its massive consumption rate.

Most music streaming apps let you download songs to your cell phone, which can help in conserving cellular data on the go. To stream music in your vehicle, learn how to connect your phone to your car.

Podcasts Data Usage

Approximately 60MB per hour

As a rule of thumb, we've found most podcasts are approximately 1MB per minute; if you're wanting to listen to a 40-minute podcast, expect to use about 40MB of data. This varies depending on the exact quality the podcast has been encoded in—some podcasts are larger, some are smaller—but in general, podcasts aren't too data intensive.

If you don't want to use data listening to podcasts on the go, most apps will let you download episodes for future listening while you're connected to a wireless network.

Gaming Data Usage

From 3MB per hour

Games with online connectivity aren't normally too data intensive. In our testing, we found that both Hearthstone and Fire Emblem Heroes would use around 400KB in 10 minutes. More demanding games such as Pokémon Go or Fortnite can churn through a lot more data; in some cases, we've seen it use over 90MB in a day. In short, the more simultaneous elements your game uses (like AI or live person-to-person connectivity), the higher its data consumption.

App Downloads

If you're looking to download apps over your mobile connection, it's best to check their sizes before you start installing. Both the App Store and Google Play Store show app sizes, and will give you a warning if the app you're downloading is over a certain threshold.

While some apps are tiny, many day-to-day apps can demand a lot of data. The latest version of Facebook is a 251MB or so update, for example, and the latest version of Uber is around 298MB. In most cases, we'd recommend saving app downloads and updates for when you're on a Wi-Fi network.

If you're worried about how much data you use while driving around, check out our guide on how much data Google Maps uses.

How to Check Data Usage

Checking your overall data usage quite easy, no matter which carrier you're with. You can often use your carrier's app or website, or even send a text to find out where you stand in your current billing cycle. To check your data usage with Verizon, for example, you can text #DATA (#3282) to have your current total sent to you. To check data usage with T-Mobile, visit your My T-Mobile account or text #WEB# (#932#).

Your monthly data consumption really comes down to individual activities. Not sure which apps are getting the most love (and eating the most data)? No worries—your phone calculates your data usage for you, and it's easy to find.

To check data usage on an iPhone:

Open your Settings app, and go to the Cellular menu.
Scroll down to your list of apps.
Tap to see how much data each app has consumed in your current billing period, as well as your previous billing period.

If any particular app is using too much data, you can toggle it to "off." That way the app will only connect to the internet when you're on Wi-Fi.

To check data usage on an Android smartphone:

Open Settings, then find your "Network and Internet" menu.
Tap Data Usage, then scroll down to "Mobile" to see your total usage for your billing cycle.
Scroll further below to see each app's individual data consumption.

Android phones also let you set up a data limit and warning when you start to use too much cell phone data for your liking. To set it up:

Under the same Data Usage menu, select "Data Warning and Limit."
Tap on "App data usage cycle" to set the day you want your cycle tracking to begin.
Scroll back up and toggle "Set data warning" to "on."

Best Cell Phone Data Plans

If cutting back on your screen time isn't on the menu (hello, remote working and Zoom calls!), it's time to find a phone plan that supports your data needs. Your best bet is likely an unlimited data plan, giving you as much data as you need without worrying about overage fees or throttling. And while unlimited options are typically the priciest phone plans, there are plenty of MVNOs, like Visible, that cater to the budget-conscious shopper without sacrificing on those precious gigabits (not to be confused with gigabytes). Here are some of the most popular unlimited plans currently on the market.

#1	Visible	Visible Unlimited Data No Contract $25/mo	100%	View Plan
#2	Mint Mobile	Mint Mobile Unlimited Data No Contract $25/mo Deal: Get this plan for just $25/mo. when you switch to Mint Mobile using promo code 15OFF at checkout. Upfront payment required	72%	View Plan
#3	T-Mobile	T-Mobile Unlimited Data No Contract $50/mo Deal: Get up to $800 via virtual prepaid MasterCard when you bring an eligible phone, activate a new line on select plans and port-in your number and switch from select carriers	63%	View Plan
#4	XFINITY Mobile	XFINITY Mobile Unlimited Data No Contract $0/mo Deal: Get a FREE 1 year of Xfinity Mobile Select Plan with Xfinity Internet required	62%	View Plan
#5	Visible	Visible Unlimited Data No Contract $35/mo	44%	View Plan
#6	US Mobile	US Mobile Unlimited Data No Contract $25/mo whistleOut Exclusive: Get this plan for only $45 for 3 months ($15/mo.) with new number activation OR $5 off per month for 6 mo. (up to 3 lines) OR 30 Days FREE Trial	44%	View Plan
#7	Verizon	Verizon Unlimited Data No Contract $85/mo $40 Upfront Deal: Get $10 off per line for 1 line via monthly promo credits over 36 months. For new customers only	31%	View Plan
#8	T-Mobile	T-Mobile Unlimited Data No Contract $85/mo	27%	View Plan
#9	US Mobile	US Mobile Unlimited Data No Contract $25/mo whistleOut Exclusive: Get this plan for only $45 for 3 months ($15/mo.) with new number activation OR $5 off per month for 6 mo. (up to 3 lines) OR 30 Days FREE Trial	26%	View Plan
#10	Cricket	Cricket Unlimited Data No Contract $55/mo $9.99 Upfront	24%	View Plan

Conversely, one of the benefits of checking your data use is figuring out whether you're overpaying for a cell phone plan you don't actually use. Discovering you're a relatively light internet user means you can drop down to a smaller plan and save.

The best way to find your perfect phone plan is to compare carriers that offer the data you need combined with the best coverage in your area. Use WhistleOut's comparison tool to see whose plans tick all of the boxes, including strong coverage and even your preferred plan price.

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Lauren Hannula

Managing Editor

Lauren is WhistleOut's Managing Editor. With over 14 years of digital writing and publishing experience, she's developed a passion for breaking down overly complex topics to offer easy, affordable solutions that help make the most of the tech you already have in your pocket. Her work has appeared in industry stalwarts such as CNET, Yahoo! News, and Forbes.

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