Most travellers buy too much data, then buy it again next trip because they never checked what they used. Here is a way to size a plan in two minutes.
Start with what you actually do
Rough hourly consumption, useful for planning rather than accounting:
| Activity | Roughly per hour |
|---|---|
| Maps and navigation | 5 to 10 MB |
| Messaging, with photos | 10 to 20 MB |
| Web and social feeds | 60 to 150 MB |
| Music streaming | 40 to 150 MB |
| Video calls | 200 to 600 MB |
| Video streaming, standard quality | 300 to 700 MB |
| Video streaming, high definition | 1 to 3 GB |
Two numbers do most of the damage: video streaming and video calls. Everything else is noise by comparison.
A week-long city trip
Navigation, messaging, a few searches, uploading photos, the occasional video call home. That is typically 200 to 500 MB a day, so 1 to 3 GB covers a week with room to spare. Add a gigabyte if you will stream music on trains or take long video calls.
A month of remote work
Video meetings change the arithmetic completely. An hour of video calls a day is 6 to 18 GB over a month before you have done anything else. Plan for 20 GB and up, and prefer a plan you can top up rather than one you have to replace.
A short layover or a business overnight
You want maps, ride-hailing, email and a boarding pass. 500 MB is plenty, and a one- or three-day plan usually costs less than a coffee at the airport.
Four habits that stretch a small plan
- Download before you fly. Offline maps for the city, your playlists and anything you plan to watch. Do it on hotel or home Wi-Fi.
- Turn off background app refresh for the trip, or at least for photo backup. Automatic cloud photo upload is the single biggest surprise on most travellers’ usage screens.
- Cap video quality. Most streaming apps have a cellular-quality setting. Standard definition over a holiday saves gigabytes.
- Watch the number. Both iPhone and Android show data used per line in their cellular settings, and our app shows what is left on the plan with an alert before you run out.
Buying twice is fine
Running out is not a disaster. A second plan is a two-minute purchase, and plans that support top-up let you add data to the eSIM already on your phone without installing anything new. Buying a small plan first and topping up is usually cheaper than guessing high.
See what a destination costs on the destinations page, or read eSIM or roaming: what each one actually costs if you are still deciding how to get online at all.