How Much Data Do You Need? Real Usage for Maps, WhatsApp, Instagram and Netflix

Most travellers overestimate what they use, then buy too much data. A few underestimate badly, and run out on day three.

For a week away, 1–3 GB covers maps, messaging and light browsing. 3–7 GB is realistic if you use social media daily. Over 10 GB only if you stream video or tether a laptop. The single biggest factor is video: one hour of HD streaming can use more than a whole day of everything else combined.

Here is what each app actually uses per hour, where the numbers come from, and how to work out what your trip needs.

Data usage per hour, by activity

The light stuff: messaging, email, maps

Two things worth noticing. Navigation is almost free. At about 5 MB an hour you could navigate for ten hours straight and use less than a single minute of HD video. The fear of "Maps eating my data" is misplaced — unless you switch to satellite view, which is roughly thirty times heavier.

Text messaging is effectively free too. Telstra, citing the ACCC, puts 40 emails without attachments at about 2 MB. You would need to send several thousand messages to trouble a 1 GB plan.

The middle: music and social media

Spotify's own figures are published as bitrates rather than megabytes, so we converted them: bitrate in kbit/s, times 3,600 seconds, divided by 8 to get kilobytes, divided by 1,000 for megabytes. At Normal quality that is about 43 MB an hour, which means roughly 23 hours of music on a single gigabyte.

Social media is where estimates go wrong, because the same app behaves completely differently depending on what you look at. Scrolling an Instagram photo feed is about 120 MB an hour. Watching Reels in the same app is about five times that, because Reels is video. If you only change one setting before you travel, turn off video autoplay.

The heavy stuff: video

Netflix is the most reliable figure on this page: Netflix publishes it themselves, and Telstra's independent numbers match theirs exactly.

Why published data figures disagree so much

If you have searched this before, you will have seen wildly different numbers, and it is worth knowing why rather than just picking the first one.

Video calls are the clearest example. StarHub puts a one-to-one standard-definition call at about 540 MB an hour. Telstra says up to 1.5 GB. Both can be right: a video call sends data as well as receiving it, so whether the figure counts one direction or both roughly doubles it, and "standard definition" is not a fixed bitrate. Zoom's own documentation gives 600 kbit/s for a good-quality one-to-one call and 1.2 Mbit/s for 720p, which works out at roughly 270 MB and 540 MB an hour in each direction.

Compression keeps improving. A 1080p video today uses meaningfully less data than the same video did a few years ago, because codecs got better. Older articles overstate current usage, and many sites simply copy those older numbers.

For that reason, treat every figure here as a planning estimate with a generous margin, not a guarantee. We have said where each one comes from so you can judge it yourself.

How much should you actually buy?

Prices verified 16 September 2026 and shown in NZD; Australian dollar prices are identical numbers.

A worked example. Two weeks in Japan, using Maps two hours a day, messaging throughout, half an hour of Instagram in the evening, and a couple of video calls home:

• Maps: 2 hrs × 5 MB × 14 days = 140 MB
• Messaging and email: roughly 40 MB a day × 14 = 560 MB
• Instagram: 0.5 hr × 300 MB (midway between feed and Reels) × 14 = 2.1 GB
• Two 30-minute video calls: 0.5–1.5 GB

Total: roughly 3.3–4.3 GB, so a 5GB plan is comfortable and 10GB is unnecessary. Notice that Instagram alone accounts for about half of it.

Five ways to halve your usage

1. Download before you fly. Offline maps, playlists and a couple of shows, all on home Wi-Fi. Offline navigation uses essentially no data at all.
2. Cap video quality at 480p. In YouTube, Netflix and Instagram settings. On a phone screen the difference is slight; the data difference is several-fold.
3. Turn off video autoplay in Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X, so videos load only when you tap them.
4. Turn off photo cloud backup on mobile data. iCloud Photos and Google Photos will quietly upload every holiday photo at full resolution. Telstra puts ten photo uploads at about 40 MB, and most people take far more than ten a day on holiday.
5. Use audio-only for calls where you can. An audio call is roughly 35–40 MB an hour against 500 MB or more with video — more than a tenfold saving.

Point four is the one that catches people out. It runs in the background, so there is no moment where you decide to spend the data.

Frequently asked questions

How much data do I need for a week abroad?

For maps, messaging and light browsing, 1 to 3 GB per week is usually enough. Add daily social media and 3 to 7 GB is more realistic. If you stream video, take long video calls or tether a laptop, plan for 10 GB or more.

How much data does Google Maps use?

About 5 MB per hour for standard turn-by-turn navigation, according to telco estimates. That is tiny, so navigation is rarely what drains a plan. Satellite view is far heavier at roughly 150 MB per hour, and downloading offline maps before you travel reduces navigation data to almost nothing.

How much data does Instagram use per hour?

Roughly 120 MB per hour scrolling a feed of photos, and about 600 MB per hour watching Stories and Reels, because those are video. Turning off video autoplay is the single most effective setting to change before you travel.

How much data does YouTube use per hour?

Around 225 MB at 240p, 420 to 560 MB at 480p, and about 1.8 GB at 720p. Published estimates vary widely between sources because video compression keeps improving and content differs, so treat these as planning figures with a margin.

Does WhatsApp use much data?

Text messages and voice notes use very little, around 40 MB per hour of active use, and you could send thousands of texts without troubling a 1 GB plan. Video calls are the expensive part, at roughly 250 MB per hour one-to-one and more for group calls.

Pick a plan that fits

Work out your rough total, add a little margin, and buy once. Browse SIMNOVA eSIM plans for 200+ destinations — from NZ$2.95, delivered by email in seconds, and the plan does not start until you land.

New to eSIMs? Start with what a travel eSIM is and how it works. Wondering whether to just use roaming instead? See eSIM vs roaming.

Last updated: 16 September 2026. Figures sourced from Netflix, Spotify, Zoom, Telstra and StarHub; plan prices verified on this date.