How much data do
you really need?

As a rough guide — these are general industry reference values, not measurements of ours: navigation about 30–50 MB per hour, messaging and email about 50 MB a day, social media with video half a gigabyte to a gigabyte per hour, HD video considerably more. If you only navigate and message, you get by on very little; if you watch video or share a hotspot, you use a multiple of that. The most reliable estimate is your own: your phone's settings show what you use per month at home. On unlimited plans the local carrier's fair-use policy applies — we ourselves never cut you off and never bill extra.

Netflix roughly 0.3 GB on low, 0.7 GB on SD, 3 GB on HD and 7 GB on 4K. YouTube roughly 0.3 GB at 480p up to 1.65 GB at 1080p. TikTok roughly 0.8–1.0 GB per hour. These are the providers' own reference figures, not measurements of ours.

Around 30–50 MB per hour of active navigation. Downloading offline maps before you leave cuts that to almost nothing — the single most effective way to save data on a trip.

A voice call uses roughly 0.3–0.5 MB per minute, so about 20–30 MB per hour. A video call uses roughly 3–5 MB per minute, so about 200–300 MB per hour.

With moderate use, 3–5 GB. With a lot of video in your feed, more like 8–10 GB. That range is exactly where the decision between a 5 GB package and an unlimited plan sits.

A noticeable amount. Operating system and app updates, photo and cloud sync, backups, mail fetching and messenger previews all keep running as soon as the data connection is up. It pays to set automatic updates and cloud backups to Wi-Fi only before you travel, and to limit background refresh for apps you do not need on the road. On a data package that directly protects the volume you bought; on an unlimited plan the local carrier's fair-use policy applies anyway — we never cut you off and never bill extra. We have no measurements of our own here: how much accumulates in the background depends heavily on your device, your settings and how many apps you have installed.

HD streaming usually works in practice, but we cannot promise it — the speed that reaches you is decided by the network on the ground. 4K is unrealistic while travelling: it pulls a great deal of data in a short time. On unlimited plans the local carrier's fair-use policy also applies; we ourselves never cut you off and never bill extra.

For mail, chat, cloud documents and a daily video call, yes. If you spend practically the whole working day in video conferences or move large files, a data package with a large allowance is the more dependable choice — we say that openly.

Yes. Video conferencing uses roughly 0.5–1.5 GB per hour. Call quality depends more on latency than on bandwidth, and latency is higher when roaming because your traffic takes a detour through a gateway abroad.

Yes — file size is not the issue, we block no transfers. On unlimited plans the local carrier's fair-use policy applies; the carrier sets it, not us. We ourselves never cut you off and never bill extra. How quickly a transfer completes is decided by the network on the ground. If you regularly move large files — photography or filming on the road, for instance — a large data package is the more honest fit: the allowance is fixed from the start.

For turn-based and casual games, yes. For competitive real-time games latency matters, and it is higher when roaming because your traffic runs through a gateway abroad.

On the device under Cellular → Statistics on iOS — reset the counter before you travel — or Data usage on Android. With AeroSims you can also see the real figure counted by the network, through the personal link in your order confirmation. The network's counter is the one that matters; the one on your device usually differs a little.

We have no figure of our own for that gap. That it exists is normal and true of every mobile operator: your phone counts the payload of its apps, while the network also counts protocol overhead, re-sent packets and partly rounded sessions — and the counting periods do not run in sync. In practice the network's counter is usually somewhat higher than your phone's. What counts for your usage and remaining allowance is the network's figure, which we show you on the status page for your eSIM.

Our network supplier has not documented the exact billing units and rounding rules to us, so we make no claim about them. What matters in practice: on unlimited plans we bill no volume at all — the local carrier's fair-use policy applies, and we never cut you off or bill extra. On data packages your usage is deducted from the allowance you bought; once it is used up the connection ends and nothing is billed on top. We do not offer top-ups — if the allowance is not enough, you buy another eSIM.

While the eSIM is running you can see your usage and remaining allowance on the status page for your order. Whether that page keeps showing the unused remainder permanently after the plan expires is something we have not tested, so we do not promise it — write to us if you need the final figure and we will request it from our network partner. On unlimited plans there is no remaining allowance in the strict sense, because no volume is counted against you; only the duration is limited.