Mobile Data: What Is It And How Much Do You Need?

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Mobile data allows your phone to connect to the internet, and is delivered to your device via a mobile network. In this guide, we’ll take a look at how much mobile data you’ll typically use on basic activities, to give you a better idea of how much data you need.

Gone are the days of phone plans with limited call and text inclusions, with unlimited standard national calls and SMS pretty much standard across postpaid and prepaid plans. Thanks to the constant improvement in smartphones each year — whether they’re cheap phones or premium devices — there is no doubt that our data needs have changed over the past few years. Our need for more data is reflected by the amount of gigabytes that the telcos are offering. Now when comparing phone plans, the biggest measure of ‘value for money’ is usually determined by how much mobile data is included on the plan.

Where once 10GB of data would cost a fair bit, now you can easily get more than 10GB for as little as $20 per month. This increasing need for data has also seen a rise in big-data phone plans with over 100GB available, not to mention ‘unlimited’ data plans (we’ll get to that later). But, the big question still remains: how much mobile data do you actually need?

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What is mobile data?

Mobile data allows your phone to connect to the internet, and is delivered to your device via a mobile network. This is the same network that allows you to send and receive calls and SMS. As long as you are near enough to a mobile tower to receive a signal to your device, you can use mobile data, whether that’s on 3G, 4G or 5G mobile network. In Australia, the mobile networks are operated by Telstra, Optus and Vodafone.

Mobile Data vs WiFi

This is different to using WiFi, which uses a modem/router to deliver a signal from a (usually) fixed internet connection. WiFi signals also have a shorter reach than mobile networks.

Telcos will typically include an amount of data (usually measured in gigabytes/GB) on a phone plan for you to use within your billing period for postpaid (typically per month) or expiry/recharge period for prepaid plans (commonly over 28 or 30 days). Each activity you do which requires the internet, will use a portion of this data, unless your device is connected to a WiFi network.

Mobile data is also used for mobile broadband and home wireless broadband plans, as these internet types use a mobile network to connect you to the internet.

How much mobile data do I need?

Now that we’ve gone through the common activities that require and use mobile data, the big question is: how much data do I need on my phone plan? There are a few steps you can take to help determine how much data you’re likely to need:

Check the usage on your current plan — most telcos offer apps with integrated tools which measure and track your usage, or this could be listed on your last phone bill.
Check your device to see how much mobile data your apps use — most devices should offer this information in some form (Apple’s iOS shows how much over a certain period of time, which could be for as long as you’ve had your phone). Simply go to your device’s settings and find the ‘mobile data’ section to see what information is available (navigating to this will vary between devices).
Other apps which track mobile data usage may be available to download from your device’s app store.

Of course, if you’re frequently going over your mobile data usage each month and being charged excess data fees (or frequently recharging your prepaid plan before the end of the expiry period), this is a good indication that you might need more data!

What type of data user are you?

If you’re unable to determine your usage from tracking your mobile data, you might need to do some calculations to work it out. Consider how frequently you use your phone when you’re not connected to a WiFi network, and what sorts of activities you use your phone for during this time. Let’s take a look at a few examples to help you determine what kind of mobile data user you are.

Light user — you mostly use your phone when connected to a WiFi network, however when you’re using mobile data, you occasionally use maps, browse the web and check emails, only for a few hours per month (less than 10 hours per month): requires 1GB to 10GB of data.
Moderate user — you use WiFi but are also out of the house frequently and rely on mobile data for regular social media checking, web browsing, emails, music streaming and occasional video streaming for several hours each week (around 20 hours per month): requires 10GB to 40GB data.
Heavy user — you use mobile data every day for several hours and for activities like video streaming, gaming, social media, music streaming and general web browsing: requires 50GB data or more.

Hopefully this can give you a clearer idea of how much data you’ll generally need each month based on your usage. You can also calculate your requirements based on the usage estimates we’ve mentioned in this guide.

How to find the best mobile data plan for you

Now that you have a clearer idea of how much phone data you need on your plan, it’s time to compare phone plans. Firstly, you’ll need to decide whether a prepaid or postpaid plan is best for you.

Postpaid phone plans will typically send you a bill at the end of the month. If you use up your plan inclusions, you might have extra charges that appear on your next bill, such as excess data usage fees. Now let’s compare some SIM-only postpaid phone plans with different data inclusions to give you an idea of what kind of value you’ll get for your money.

Here is a selection of postpaid plans from Canstar Blue’s database with 10GB of data or less, listed in order of standard cost, lowest to highest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest. Use our internet comparison tool to see a wider range of plans from other providers. This table includes products with links to referral partners.

Here is a selection of postpaid plans from Canstar Blue’s database with 50GB of data or less, listed in order of standard cost, lowest to highest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest. Use our internet comparison tool to see a wider range of plans from other providers. This table includes products with links to referral partners.

Here is a selection of postpaid plans from Canstar Blue’s database with more than 50GB of data, listed in order of standard cost, lowest to highest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest. Use our internet comparison tool to see a wider range of plans from other providers. This table includes products with links to referral partners.

Prepaid gives you an allocation of inclusions to use within a set period of time (known as an expiry or recharge period) — if you use up these inclusions before the end of your expiry period, you’ll need to recharge or purchase an ‘add on’, such as a data pack (if available). Let’s take a look at some SIM-only prepaid plans with different data inclusions to give you an idea of how much you can expect to pay.

Here is a selection of prepaid plans from Canstar Blue’s database with 10GB of data or less, listed in order of standard cost, lowest to highest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest. Use our internet comparison tool to see a wider range of plans from other providers. This table includes products with links to referral partners.

Here is a selection of prepaid plans from Canstar Blue’s database with 50GB of data or less, listed in order of standard cost, lowest to highest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest. Use our internet comparison tool to see a wider range of plans from other providers. This table includes products with links to referral partners.

Here is a selection of prepaid plans from Canstar Blue’s database with more than 50GB of data, listed in order of standard cost, lowest to highest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest, then by data allowance, largest to smallest. Use our internet comparison tool to see a wider range of plans from other providers. This table includes products with links to referral partners.

Both plans have their pros and cons, and it depends on what you prefer. When it comes to data inclusions, both prepaid and postpaid plans tend to offer the same data inclusions at very similar price points, however postpaid plans can be a little more generous with how much data you get for your money.

There are even some unlimited data phone plans, but these have a catch. Telstra, Optus and Vodafone don’t have excess data charges on postpaid plans, essentially offering ‘unlimited’ data, however, this is at capped speeds. If you’re on a plan from Telstra or Optus, once you use up your data inclusions, you’ll be able to keep using data but at the capped speed of 1.5Mbps (which is still fast enough for basic internet usage and might even be ok for SD video streaming).

Vodafone had previously offered an unlimited full-speed data plan, but now Vodafone’s postpaid plans are capped at 2Mbps once you’ve used your fast-data inclusions. When it comes to prepaid, Felix Mobile is the only telco offering unlimited data, however this is at the capped speed of 20Mbps, which is a fairly reasonable speed for phone usage.

If you’re still unsure about how much data you’ll need, it’s best to first sign up to a month-to-month, no lock-in contract phone plan. That way, if your plan doesn’t have enough data (or you have too much!), you’re free to upgrade or downgrade your plan for the next billing cycle. If your data usage fluctuates from month-to-month, these plans also give you the flexibility of upgrading or downgrading as needed.

Estimated mobile data usage for social media, video streaming, gaming and more

How much mobile data does email and web browsing use?

When you browse the web — whether you’re shopping online, looking up recipes or even using Google Maps — each page you load uses a portion of data. Web browsing can use around 60MB of data per hour, however images and videos on web pages can chew up more data than a text-only page. Considering there are around 1,000MB in 1GB, this means that 60MB will only use around 0.06GB — if you use your phone’s mobile data for web browsing, it’s going to take a lot to use up just 1GB.

Much like web browsing, checking your emails (both sending and receiving) uses up some mobile data, but how much depends on whether there are images and attachments in the emails. Sending or receiving an email could use around 0.5MB per email, which is not much at all – so unless you’re sending and receiving multiple emails with large attachments each day, standard email usage will not use much data.

This is much harder to determine as different social media apps will have different usage needs. Typically, images and videos will drain the most data, so that means apps like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook will generally have higher data needs than those of Twitter, Snapchat, and Uber, which tend to have more text mixed with images and video.

It’s a bit tricky to determine just how much mobile data Facebook uses. It can be anywhere from around 120MB and up to 300MB or more per hour, depending on what you’re browsing. Viewing more videos on Facebook will push your usage up.

Instagram on the other hand, will use more data than Facebook. Considering that the Instagram feed is made up of images and videos, it naturally has greater data needs than Facebook. Using Instagram for an hour can use up around 400MB of data, but this does depend on the content — majority video watching will use more data than a feed of mainly images. This also means that you can easily chew through 1GB of data in around 2.5 hours. If you do that 2.5 hours of scrolling in just one day, it will only take you 10 days of this daily habit to reach 10GB of data usage.

Other forms of social media, such as video calling apps, can also use up a fair amount of data. For example, making video calls with FaceTime can use around 180MB per hour and other video calling apps might use a similar amount. If you spend around four hours video calling friends and family — and using mobile data to do it — you could be using up around 1GB.

How much mobile data does audio streaming use?

Young woman looking at phone while wearing headphones

If you can’t live without your Spotify — or other music streaming apps like Apple Music or Amazon Music — the big worry is whether you’re going to go through your data when streaming on the go. While music streaming doesn’t use as much data as video, the audio quality level will play a part in how much data music streaming uses.

Using Spotify as an example, data usage is calculated in Kbps (kilobits per second), and how many Kbps are used is determined by the audio quality setting. Low quality is around 24Kbps, Normal is around 96 Kbps, High is 160Kbps and Very High is 320Kbps. So, for example, if you set your quality to ‘Normal’, you’ll use around 0.66MB per one minute, or 2MB per 3 minute song, therefore, around 40MB per hour, which would take around 25 hours to use 1GB of data. If you wanted to limit your mobile data usage while streaming to 1GB per week, this would limit you to around 3.5 hours per day over seven days.

Much like web browsing, music streaming doesn’t use too much data for a few hours per day, but it can add up, especially if you stream constantly and in high quality.

How much mobile data does video streaming use?

Perhaps one of the most data-intensive activities, video streaming is usually the biggest culprit when it comes to going over your data allowance. Of course, the quality of video that you’re streaming will have an impact on how much data you’re using. This usage is also different from app to app, so while YouTube streaming might use a certain amount, this could be different to what you use streaming Netflix or Disney+.

YouTube has a range of video qualities that you can choose from, (which is dependent on the video itself as not all videos are available in all quality levels). Whichever quality setting you choose will determine how much data your streaming will chew up, with quality options including: 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p (not to mention the increase in HDR, 4K and 8K content). For example, streaming in 480p can use around 264MB of data per hour, 720p might use around 870MB per hour, and 1080p, which is full HD, could use 1.65GB of data per hour.

Netflix is a little easier to work out, with Standard Definition (SD), High Definition (HD) and Ultra HD available. Netflix’s Basic plan only includes SD, its Standard plan includes both SD and HD, while the top-level plan includes SD, HD and Ultra HD. The Netflix website states that watching one hour of Netflix in SD quality will use about 1GB of data, while streaming in HD will use around 3GB of data per hour.

Disney+ also offers only a couple of quality settings — Auto and Data Saver — which are most likely HD and SD respectively. While Disney+ doesn’t offer solid information on how much data the Disney+ app uses, it’s safe to assume it’s a similar amount to Netflix.

BINGE offers more choice of video quality and lists on its website that a SD stream will use 0.3GB to 0.5GB per hour, while HD will use 1.5GB to 3.25GB per hour. Stan lists that using low SD will use around 0.57GB of data per hour, medium SD will use 1.13GB per hour, while HD uses around 2.89GB per hour, and 4K Ultra is 7GB of data per hour.

Most of the other video streaming apps, including Kayo, Optus Sport, Amazon Prime, and Foxtel Now, do chew through similar amounts of data, so that 1GB for SD and 3GB for HD per hour is a pretty good way to think about your mobile data usage when streaming video. This does mean that if you’re using your mobile data to stream just one hour of video each day — even in SD — you’ll generally go through at least 1GB daily, which can easily add up to around 30GB per month.

How much mobile data do video calls use?

It’s become exponentially more important in recent years, however video conferencing apps such as Facetime and Zoom can also chew up a huge chunk of your mobile data.

To use Facetime as an example, a single minute of video conferencing chews through 3MB of mobile data. This means that an hour-long call would use 180MB of mobile data. So if you’re trying to conserve your data, maybe consider sending a text before you video call.

How much mobile data does gaming use?

Much like the activities already mentioned, the amount of data used when playing games on your phone is really dependent on the game itself. Games with more video, 3D graphics and multiplayer functions will naturally need much more data than less visually intensive/video based games.

For example, Pokemon Go can use anywhere between 2MB to 8MB per hour, while Call of Duty Mobile can use around 35MB per hour, while other games could easily use 1GB per hour. If you tend to play a lot of games on your phone over several hours a day and with mobile data, it could be using up a fair amount of megabytes, so you might want to monitor your usage.

How to manage data usage on mobile

While choosing a phone plan with the right data is one way of ensuring you have enough data for your needs, there are also ways that you can manage your mobile data usage. For example, if you’re a heavy data user but really want to save some money by switching to a cheap phone plan, there are a few steps you can take to minimise your data usage. You can check your data usage through a network provider, iOS device, or an Android device.

Managing data usage through a network provider

Telstra, Optus, and the plethora of other telco providers have streamlined ways to check your data usage. Most major telcos have apps with dedicated sections to check your data usage, however if this isn’t available to you, using their web page is the next best thing.

Managing data usage through an iOS device

Although it may not be as accurate as your provider’s information, iPhone users are able to check their current period’s usage. To do this,

Step One: Open Settings
Step Two: Tap Mobile
Step Three: Select ‘Mobile Data’ to see your data over the current period

Managing data usage through an Android device

To check Android data usage, head to Settings, Connections, and then Data Usage. This process may differ between Android models.

Hopefully these tips should help you to limit your mobile data usage. If you find that you’re routinely using more data than your activity indicates, there could be a problem that might be worth investigating further. Check your data usage with your telco’s app to see what activity is using up your data, and if you don’t feel this adds up to your actual usage, you might need to get in touch with your telco.

Tips on how to reduce your mobile data usage

Hopefully monitoring your mobile data can help you make some changes to reduce your usage. However, if you find that you’re routinely using more data than your plan allows, there could be a problem that might be worth investigating further. Check out these data-saving tips to help conserve your data:

Use WiFi networks whenever possible — eg: avoid using phone data at home if you have good home internet and WiFi connectivity
Download music and movies to your device to watch on the go — Netflix, Disney+, Stan, Spotify, etc have the capability to download content to your device (some shows/movies might not be available to download on some video apps)
Adjust app settings to low-data usage settings — some apps have settings that limit mobile data usage (such as reducing video quality), so check the settings of those data-draining apps you use the most
Limit mobile data use on some apps — you might be able to switch off mobile data for apps in your phone’s settings, which is a great way of reducing how many apps might be using data in the background
Turn off app auto sync, automatic updates and notifications
Monitor your data usage — try limiting your usage, especially more data-intensive activities, if you’re using up too much data during your billing cycle

Read more: 5 easy ways to save mobile data

What is mobile data roaming?

Roaming on a mobile phone allows you to use your phone outside of your provider’s geographical reach. This means that even when you are in an area that your provider doesn’t cover, you are still able to access and use the internet. People mostly use roaming when they are travelling overseas, but there are some areas of Australia where your phone will rely on roaming.

Although roaming doesn’t use your mobile data, it does incur other charges. These charges are managed by your provider and will be charged to you in the same way as your regular mobile data bill. If you don’t need to be using the roaming feature, turning it off can save you a lot of data.

To turn off the roaming feature on your iPhone:

Step One: Open Settings > Mobile > Mobile Data Options
Step Two: Tap the toggle to turn Roaming on or off. You can also choose to roam in 4G or 3G.

While you are in Mobile Data Options, you can also switch to Low Data Mode to save data.

To turn off the roaming feature on your Android:

Step One: Open Settings > Wireless Networks > Mobile Networks
Step Two: Uncheck Data Roaming

Emma Bradstock

Senior Telco Specialist

Emma Bradstock has been an authority on consumer phone, internet, technology and streaming markets in Australia for over five years. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Media from Macquarie University and has over a decade of professional writing experience in print and digital media.

Mobile data: What is it and how much do you need?

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