How much data does streaming use?
Video quality maps almost linearly onto data. Going from HD to 4K roughly quadruples what you use.
Almost exactly 4K video, an hour
7 GB is bigger than 5 of the 8 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| podcast, an hour | 0.03 GB | 233× | |
| music streaming, an hour | 0.072 GB | 97.2× | At 160 kbit/s |
| video call, an hour | 0.6 GB | 11.7× | |
| SD video, an hour | 0.7 GB | 10× | |
| HD video, an hour | 3 GB | 2.33× | |
| 4K video, an hour | 7 GB | 1× | |
| a 10 GB mobile allowance | 10 GB | 0.7× | |
| a 100 GB mobile allowance | 100 GB | 1/14.3 |
Worth knowing
- An hour of 4K uses about 7 GB — a 10 GB monthly mobile allowance is gone in 85 minutes.
- Audio streaming is trivially cheap by comparison: you could stream music for 140 hours in the data one 4K film uses.
Frequently asked
How much data does Netflix use?
About 1 GB an hour for SD, 3 GB for HD and 7 GB for 4K. YouTube and Disney+ are broadly similar; the codec matters more than the service.
How do I reduce streaming data use?
Drop the quality setting one step, which usually halves the data for a change most people cannot see on a phone. Downloading over Wi-Fi in advance is better still.