📊 Data Planning Guide 2026

How Much Data Do You Actually Need Abroad? The Honest Math

Updated August 2026 · Figures from Netflix and Spotify official documentation, plus our own catalogue

Every eSIM seller has an incentive to tell you to buy more data than you need. We sell eSIMs, so treat this page with appropriate suspicion — and then check the arithmetic, because all of it is published by the app makers themselves or derived from their stated bitrates. Most travellers massively over-buy. Here is how to find your actual number.

What the app makers actually publish

Start with the only two categories big enough to matter, because everything else is rounding error.

Video streaming — the one that eats plans

Netflix publishes its mobile figures directly. On its Save Data setting you get roughly 6 hours of viewing per GB; on Automatic, about 4 hours per GB; and on Maximum Data, Netflix states you can use 1 GB per 20 minutes or more — which is three gigabytes an hour. That single setting is the difference between a 5 GB plan lasting a fortnight and lasting ninety minutes.

YouTube, notably, does not publish per-hour playback figures — the numbers you see quoted around the web are third-party estimates, and we are not going to launder them into a table and call them facts. What we can say is that YouTube's own quality selector behaves the same way Netflix's does: 480p costs a fraction of 1080p, and 1080p costs a fraction of 4K.

Music — much smaller than people fear

Spotify publishes its streaming bitrates: Low ≈ 24 kbit/s, Normal ≈ 96 kbit/s, High ≈ 160 kbit/s, Very High ≈ 320 kbit/s. The arithmetic from there is fixed, so these numbers are derived rather than measured:

Ten hours of music on the highest setting is under a gigabyte and a half. Downloading playlists on hotel Wi-Fi the night before takes even that off the table.

The measurement nobody suggests — and it takes one minute

You do not need anyone’s estimates. Your phone has already recorded exactly what you use.

iPhone: Settings → Cellular → scroll to Cellular Data Usage. Tap Reset Statistics, then check back in a week of normal life at home.
Android: Settings → Network & internet → Internet → gear icon → App data usage, and set the date range to the last 30 days.

Divide by the number of days and you have your real daily figure — with your apps, your habits, your video settings. Abroad you will typically use more maps and translation and less video (you are outside, doing things), so a fair planning rule is your home daily average, plus about a third, times the number of days.

A realistic budget by traveller type

These are planning figures for a 7-day trip, assuming hotel or café Wi-Fi in the evenings — which is how almost everyone actually travels.

What an unlimited plan really means

Almost every “unlimited” travel eSIM on the market — ours included — has a daily fair-use allowance, after which speed is reduced for the rest of that day. The difference between providers is whether they tell you the number.

AeroSims Unlimited plans typically allow 5 GB per day at full speed, then continue at a reduced speed — 512 Kbps on most destinations, 384 Kbps on a few, and the figure is printed on each product page. Nothing gets cut off and nothing costs extra; it simply slows down until the day rolls over.

The practical takeaway: unlimited is worth it when you tether daily or genuinely stream on cellular every day. If you do not, a fixed package is usually cheaper for the same experience. Our 10 GB packages start at $8.90 — roughly what two days of carrier roaming costs.

Six habits that halve your usage

1. Download offline maps for your whole destination before you fly. Google Maps and Maps.me both do this; navigation then costs almost nothing.
2. Set video apps to their data-saver setting on day one, not after the plan runs low.
3. Download playlists, podcasts and episodes on hotel Wi-Fi the night before.
4. Turn off automatic photo backup on cellular — a week of holiday photos is easily several gigabytes uploaded silently.
5. Turn off app auto-updates on cellular. This is the single most common “where did my data go” answer we see.
6. Use your phone’s per-app data screen mid-trip. Two minutes tells you exactly which app to rein in.

Common questions

How much data do I need for a week abroad?

For maps, messaging, social media and photos: 3–5 GB. Add video streaming on cellular and it climbs to 10 GB or more. The reliable method is to check your own phone’s 30-day usage at home, divide by 30, add about a third, and multiply by your trip length.

Is 5 GB enough for a two-week holiday?

For a light user who navigates and messages, yes. For anyone posting stories daily or scrolling video in the evenings, no — 10 GB is the safer buy and costs only a few dollars more.

How much data does Google Maps use?

Google does not publish a per-hour figure, and it varies hugely with how much of the map is already cached. It is far smaller than video in any case, and downloading the area offline before you travel reduces it to almost nothing.

Does a video call use more data than a voice call?

Substantially more — video is video, whichever app carries it. WhatsApp voice calls are modest; an hour of video calling is comparable to an hour of streaming.

What happens if I run out of data?

On a fixed package, data stops until you top up or buy a new plan; nothing is charged automatically and there are no bill shocks. On an Unlimited plan you are never out — you are throttled for the remainder of the day and back at full speed the next.

Should I buy unlimited to be safe?

Only if you will actually use it. For most trips a 10 GB package is cheaper than a week of unlimited and covers the same real-world usage. Buy unlimited for daily tethering, daily streaming, or long stays.

Do I need a bigger plan if I hotspot my laptop?

Yes, and it is the biggest single multiplier. Laptops assume unmetered connections: cloud sync, OS updates and background backups do not hold back. Budget at least the 20 GB tier if you tether a working laptop.

Buy the plan that fits, not the plan that scares you

Work out your number, add a sensible margin, and buy that. If you get it wrong, adding a second eSIM mid-trip takes about a minute — which is a much better outcome than paying for 50 GB you never touch.

Over 200 destinations · Fixed data from $3.90 · Unlimited plans tooFind your destination and plan size →

Netflix mobile data figures as published in Netflix’s official Help Centre. Spotify bitrates as published in Spotify’s official audio-quality documentation; the per-hour column is arithmetic derived from those bitrates, not a measurement. YouTube does not publish playback data-consumption figures and none are asserted here. AeroSims prices and fair-use allowances checked August 2026 and subject to change; the exact allowance for each destination is stated on its product page.