How much data do you need for a trip?
Short answer: for maps, messaging, e-mail and a few photos, 1 GB covers a weekend and 3 GB covers a week. Add social media, photo uploads and some video calls and you are at 5 to 10 GB for two weeks. Streaming video for hours or sharing your connection with a laptop needs 20 GB or more, or a daily plan. For comparison, the global average is 22 GB per month per smartphone (Ericsson, end of 2025), but that includes hours of video on a home-sized allowance; on a trip with hotel Wi-Fi most people use far less. The figures below come from the apps’ own help pages, last checked on 22 October 2026.
What each activity uses per hour
Maps: navigation itself is light, a few MB per hour, and you can cut it to almost nothing by downloading the area in Google Maps before you leave. Offline maps can guide you as long as the whole route is inside the downloaded area; transit, cycling and walking directions need a connection.
Messaging and e-mail: text is tiny. Photos and voice notes add a few MB each; video files are what eat into a small plan.
Music: Spotify streams at about 96 kbit/s on the Normal setting and 320 kbit/s on Very high, which works out to roughly 40 MB and 140 MB per hour. Download playlists on Wi-Fi before the flight and listening costs nothing on the road.
Video calls: Zoom recommends 1.2 Mbps up and down for a one-to-one 720p call, which is close to 1 GB per hour in total; an audio-only call at 60–80 kbit/s is about 30 MB per hour. A 10-minute video call home every day is roughly 2 GB over two weeks.
Streaming video: Netflix lists up to 0.3 GB per hour on Low, 0.7 GB on Medium, 1 GB in standard definition, 3 GB in HD and 7 GB in 4K; its mobile Save Data setting gives about 6 hours per GB. One HD film can be your whole 3 GB plan.
Social media: short videos autoplay, so an hour of scrolling can use as much as an hour of standard-definition streaming. Turning off autoplay in the app is the single biggest saving.
Three kinds of traveller
Light use (maps, messages, e-mail, a few photos, the occasional search): 1 GB for a weekend, 3 GB for a week. Example prices from our catalogue: 1 GB for 7 days in Japan $2.34, in Türkiye $2.03.
Everyday use (the above plus social media, photo uploads, music and a short video call most days): 5 GB for one to two weeks, 10 GB for a month. Japan 5 GB / 30 days $5.81; Türkiye 5 GB / 30 days $3.05; United States 5 GB / 30 days $7.12; Thailand 10 GB / 30 days $10.11.
Heavy use (streaming, long video calls, sharing the connection with a laptop, no reliable Wi-Fi): 20 GB or more, or a daily plan with a fixed allowance for each day. Thailand 20 GB / 30 days $9.17; Spain 20 GB / 30 days $17.63. Daily plans are listed on each destination page with their per-day allowance.
If you are between two sizes, take the larger one: the price difference is usually small, and a second plan bought in a hurry costs more than the step up.
How to make a small plan last
On iPhone, turn on Low Data Mode for the travel line: Settings > Cellular (or Mobile Data) > tap the line > Low Data Mode. Apple says apps then stop using data when you are not actively using them, Background App Refresh is off, streaming quality is reduced and automatic downloads and backups pause.
On Android, turn on Data Saver: Settings > Network & internet > Data Saver (the menu name varies by maker; on Samsung it is under Connections > Data usage). Most apps then only use background data on Wi-Fi.
Download before you fly, on Wi-Fi: the offline map of your city, playlists, podcasts and a film or two.
Set video quality to the lowest setting you are happy with in each app, and turn off autoplay.
Turn off automatic app updates and photo backups over mobile data; let them run on hotel Wi-Fi.
Hotspot: a laptop updates itself, syncs cloud folders and loads full web pages. If you share your connection, expect the laptop to use several times what the phone does.
How to see what you have used
On your phone: iPhone shows usage per line under Settings > Cellular; Android under Settings > Network & internet > SIMs (or Data usage). Reset the counter when you land so the figure matches the plan.
In the Voyafi app and on your order page you can see the remaining allowance of the plan. The network reports usage with a delay, so the figure can lag by a few hours.
If you run out, you can buy another plan for the same destination from the app or the website and install it next to the first one; the new plan starts when it first connects.
Sources
Netflix, How to control how much data Netflix uses: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/87
Spotify, Audio quality: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/ (the per-hour figures are our calculation from the listed bitrates)
Zoom, System requirements: https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0060748 (the per-hour figure is our calculation from the listed bandwidth)
Apple, Use Low Data Mode on your iPhone and iPad: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102433
Google, Use less mobile data with Data Saver: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7055392
Google Maps, Download areas and navigate offline: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838
Ericsson Mobility Report, mobile data traffic forecast: https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/mobility-report/dataforecasts/mobile-traffic-forecast
We checked these pages on 22 October 2026.
