Data Usage Calculator (2024)

Created by Rahul Dhari

Reviewed by

Steven Wooding

Last updated:

Jan 18, 2024

What is mobile data usage?

The term data usage is referred to as the amount of data used to perform a certain activity using an internet connection, be it mobile or Wi-Fi-based data connection. The data usage depends on several factors, one of which is the connection speed. Connection speed is measured in the units Megabits per second (Mb/s) or kilobits per second (kb/s) for slower connection (see byte conversion). Say, your bandwidth or max connection speed is 12 Mbps, which means you can transfer about 12 Megabits of data (upload or download) per second. However, it is not necessary that a certain amount of data will be used per second. Learn more with our bandwidth calculator. It varies as per the activity you are performing and for how long. Average data used per hour of activity can be found in the table below. This table is used to calculate your overall daily or monthly usage for several activities like watching videos, movies, or regular browsing from mobile or Wi-Fi data. Video files have different sizes based on the file format. Know more from video file size calculator.

Usage (Gigabytes per hour or GB/h)	Activity
8	Streaming movies in 4K (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, YouTube, etc.)
2	Streaming movies in HD
0.5	Streaming movies in SD
0.055	Streaming music (Spotify, Apple music, Amazon music, etc.)
0.09	Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram, etc.)
0.2	Multiplayer gaming (Steam, Origin, UPlay, Rockstar Club, etc.)
0.09	Video Calling (SD) (Skype, Zoom, Teams, Whereby, etc.)
2	Video Calling (HD)
2	Smart home devices
0.185	Web browsing

How to calculate data usage?

In order to calculate your monthly data usage:

Enter the number of hours spent daily on the following activities:
- Streaming movies, music, multiplayer gaming, social media networks, video calls, and web browsing.
For every activity, the calculator will return the data usage.
Scroll down to find your daily and monthly data usage.
Enter the cost incurred per GB of data.
The data usage calculator will now display the monthly expense for your data.

There's also a pie chart at the bottom to show the different fractions of data consumed by each activity.

Example of using the data usage calculator

Estimate the monthly data usage if the user spends 2 hours per day streaming movies in HD and makes an hour of video calls in HD per day. The cost of data per GB is $0.50.

To find the data usage and its cost:

Enter the no. of hours in front of the Movie streaming in HD, $H_\mathrm{m}$ Hm option as 2.
Fill in the no. of hours in front of the HD video calls, ( $H_\mathrm{v}$ Hv) option as 1.
You can now observe the daily data usage per activity. Scroll down to check the monthly data usage for these activities.
Enter the cost of data per GB as $0.50.
Data usage calculator will now return the cost incurred per month.

$\scriptsize \qquad \begin{align*}\text{Data usage} &= H_\mathrm{v} VC + H_\mathrm{m} M \\&= (1 \times 2) + (2 \times 2) \\ &= 6~\mathrm{GB/day}\end{align*}$ Datausage=HvVC+HmM=(1×2)+(2×2)=6GB/day

Cost incurred = Cost per GB × Data = $6 \times 30 \times 0.5 = \$90$ 6×30×0.5=$90
Therefore, the monthly data usage is 180 GB and the cost incurred is $90.

FAQ

How much data does streaming a movie takes?

A 2-hour-long movie consumes about 16 GB in 4K, 4 GB in HD, and 1 GB in SD resolutions, respectively.

How to calculate monthly data usage?

To calculate monthly data usage:

Calculate the data consumption for every activity.
Add the numbers to find the sum.
Multiply the sum with the number of days in a month.

How much data per hour does multiplayer gaming takes?

Multiplayer gaming platforms require high-speed connections and consume about 200 MB per hour on average.

How to calculate my internet bill?

To calculate your internet bill:

Multiply the data consumed by the cost per GB of data.
Add the taxes to the product.

Rahul Dhari