Buying a travel plan starts with one question: how big? Too small and you are rationing maps on day four. Too big and you paid for gigabytes that flew home unused.
What each thing costs in data
| Activity | Rough data use |
|---|---|
| Maps navigation | About 2 MB per hour |
| Messaging (texts, voice notes) | A few MB per day |
| Web browsing | Around 60 MB per hour |
| Social feeds (with video) | 150 to 300 MB per hour |
| Music streaming | 50 to 100 MB per hour |
| Voice calls over WhatsApp or Telegram | 30 to 60 MB per hour |
| Video calls | 300 MB to 1 GB per hour |
| Streaming video (HD) | 1 to 3 GB per hour |
| Photo upload or backup | 3 to 5 MB per photo |
These are ranges, not measurements. Quality settings, app versions and your own phone all move them, so treat the table as sizing help and round up when you are unsure.
The shape of it matters more than any single row. Maps, the app travellers worry about most, is one of the cheapest things you can do. Video, in every form, is where gigabytes actually go: one film can outweigh a week of navigation. The WhatsApp abroad guide covers what calls and voice notes cost in more detail.
Sizing a real trip
A city week, light use. Maps a few hours a day, messages, some browsing, photos held back for hotel WiFi. That comes to around 1 to 2 GB. A 1 GB plan works if you follow the savings below; 3 GB means not thinking about it.
Two normal weeks. All of the above, plus scrolling feeds over coffee, translation on menus, a few short calls home. Plan for 5 to 10 GB.
A month, or a work trip. Video calls, cloud files, a laptop on your hotspot. Take 20 GB, or take unlimited and stop counting. A laptop burns data several times faster than a phone, so hotspot days push you up a size. The hotspot guide explains why, and what to switch off first.
If your route crosses borders, compare the local plan against the regional plan before you buy. At some sizes the regional one is the cheaper of the two even for a single country.
If sizing a plan is the part you would rather skip, Roamless charges the local rate as you use data. For a trip measured in months, Nomad sells 100 GB over 365 days.
How to make a small plan last
- Download offline maps before you fly. Navigation then costs almost nothing for the whole trip.
- Save photo backup for WiFi. In your photos app, set backup to WiFi only. This is the biggest silent drain there is.
- Set video apps to lower quality while travelling, or download what you want to watch before you leave the hotel.
- Turn off background app refresh for anything you do not need live. Feeds will refresh themselves all day given the chance.
- Voice notes beat video calls when the story can wait until you are back on WiFi.
The data saver guide goes through the settings one by one, on both iPhone and Android.
Watching your usage mid-trip
Your phone counts for you: on iPhone, Settings then Cellular; on Android, Settings then Network and internet or Connections, then Data usage. For what is left on the Atli plan itself, type data or usage in the chat.
If a plan runs low, another can be added to the same eSIM without reinstalling anything. The data usage guide goes further, including per-app breakdowns and low-data alerts on Android.
The per-hour figures are ranges gathered from typical app behaviour, not measurements from a single device, and they move with quality settings and app versions. Checked August 2026.
