Advanced options
Typical rates; actual usage varies with app settings and stream quality. Most streaming apps let you cap mobile quality, which is the single biggest data saver.
What The Data Usage Calculator Works Out
- Per day: the activity's typical data rate multiplied by your hours. Video dominates everyone's data: SD streams use about 1 GB an hour, HD around 3 GB and 4K 7 GB or more, while music is about 100 MB an hour, online gaming a surprisingly light 100 to 200 MB, and browsing and messaging barely register.
- Per month: the daily figure times the days you do it. Two hours of HD streaming a day is about 180 GB a month on its own, which is why video quality settings matter more than any other habit.
- Fits in: the smallest common UK plan tier (5, 10, 30, 100 GB or unlimited) that covers the mobile data needed. A light user who streams music on the commute fits in 5 to 10 GB, a daily SD video watcher needs 30 GB or more, and anyone streaming HD on mobile data should look at 100 GB or unlimited, which now cost little more.
- Custom rate (advanced): override the preset GB per hour for the main activity, for example 0.7 GB/hr for a streaming app's data-saver mode, 0.5 GB/hr for a typical Zoom call or 15 GB/hr for a 4K HDR title at the highest bitrate.
- Second and third activities (advanced): add up to two more habits with their own hours so the monthly total reflects a real day, for example HD video plus music plus social media. Tethering a laptop counts the laptop's appetite, not the phone's.
- Share of use on Wi-Fi (advanced): the percentage of this usage that happens at home or in the office on Wi-Fi, which the plan does not have to cover. The "Mobile data needed" card is the monthly total with that share removed, and the plan tier is chosen from it.
- Monthly plan allowance (advanced): your current allowance in GB. The calculator shows the share you would use, how much is left for everything else, or roughly which day of the month it would run out.
- Cost of extra data (advanced): your network's add-on price per GB (UK networks typically charge GBP 2 to 6 per GB, or sell bolt-ons such as 5 GB for GBP 10). The card prices the overage so you can compare it with simply moving up a tier.
- Per year (advanced): the mobile data over 12 months, a useful figure when weighing a 12 or 24 month SIM-only deal. Check roaming allowances too: they are often much smaller than the domestic one.
- Breakdown table (advanced): each activity's daily and monthly data and its share of the total, which usually settles arguments about where the allowance actually went. Your phone's per-app data report shows the real-world equivalent.