If youโre on the hunt for a new internet service provider, one of the most essential questions you will need to answer for yourself is how many gigabytes (GB) of data are right for your needs. However, itโs hard to put a number on it if you donโt understand how much data you use for everyday activities. Hereโs a quick breakdown to help you determine how many GB you need for your internet use.
How Many GB Do I Need for Different Uses?
YouTube Videos
With YouTube videos, youโll have a wide range of options for the quality you can use. The higher the quality you want the video to be, the more data youโll be consuming. You can expect to be using:
- 225 MB per hour at 240p
- 315 MB per hour at 360p
- 560 MB per hour at 480p
- 1.24 GB per hour at 720p and 30 frames per second (FPS) or 1.86 GB per hour at 60 FPS
- 2 GB per hour at 1080p and 30 FPS or 3 GB per hour at 60FPS
- 4.28 GB per hour at 1440p (2k) and 30 FPS or 6.08 GB per hour at 60 FPS
- 10.58 GB per hour at 2160 (4k) and 30 FPS or about 16 GB per hour at 60 FPS
Note that there are 1000 megabytes (MB) in every gigabyte.
Streaming Movies and TV
Streaming movies and TV shows through a service like Netflix or Hulu is one of the ways you will heavily consume internet. For every hour of video you stream in HD, youโll be using about 3 GB of data. If, on the other hand, you choose to stream video in SD, you can decrease your usage to only about 1 GB each hour.
Online Games
The amount of data youโll need for online gaming largely depends on the type of games youโre playing. You should expect most popular online games to take anywhere from 30 MB all the way to 300 MB per hour. Hereโs how much data you are probably using based on your game of choice:
- Hearthstoneโabout 3 MB per hour
- Final Fantasy XIVโabout 20 MB per hour
- Minecraftโabout 40 MB per hour
- World of Warcraftโabout 40 MB per hour
- League of Legendsโabout 45 MB per hour
- Grand Theft Auto V Onlineโabout 60 MB per hour
- Fortniteโabout 100 MB per hour
- Overwatchโabout 135 MB per hour
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensiveโabout 250 MB per hour
This does not include the amount of data it takes to download a game. You should always look at how many GB youโll need to download a new game. Nowadays, you may be using well over 50 GB just to download a game onto your Xbox, PC, or PlayStation.
Video Chatting
Video chatting on apps like Zoom and Facetime is so important to stay in touch with loved ones, especially during the pandemic. Itโs also become a normal way to conduct meetings for work. Weโve all been in a situation where someone on the video chat does not have sufficient internet to communicate smoothly. If you know you video chat a lot, itโs important to have a plan strong enough to match your needs.
Your data use depends on the platform and the video quality. If youโre Zooming at 1080p, youโre using about 1.62 GB per hour. However, this will increase if you are group video chatting, and you will use 2.7 GB per hour at 1080p. On Skype, youโll likely use about 1.35 GB per hour on 1080p, but it will go up for group calls and for every additional person on the call.
Social Media Scrolling
Your data use for social media depends on what youโre doing. Simply scrolling will likely only take about 2 MB per minute (120 MB per hour). However, if youโre watching a lot of video content, that will increase to about 8 MB per minute or 160 MB per hour.
Web Browsing
Simply browsing the internet will typically use much less internet compared to some of these other activities. Sending or receiving a single email will take only about 1 MB. If youโre just Googling and browsing results, you could be online for 20 hours before using a single gigabyte of data.
Music Streaming
Because thereโs no video involved, streaming music consumes a lot less internet than watching a movie on Netflix. It will take you about seven hours to use up a single gigabyte of data.
Data Saving Tips
If you want to save your data, one thing you can do is always opt for lower quality video when streaming or video chatting. Go to your settings on various apps and experiment with decreasing the streaming quality. You can also monitor how much data youโre using on your phone by going to settings.
Make sure if youโre not using it, itโs not using up data. That means closing out of tabs and apps when youโre done with them and making sure devices are powered off when you donโt need them. If you have kids, you may want to install parental controls and set limits to avoid too much usage you donโt know about. You can also turn off automatic updates for individual apps and only update them when itโs critical.
