How much data is enough for a week abroad?

For maps, messaging, browsing and some social use, 3–5 GB covers a typical week. Regular video streaming pushes that to 20 GB or an unlimited plan.

Does Google Maps use a lot of data?

No. Navigation runs at roughly 5–15 MB per hour, and downloading the area over wifi beforehand reduces it further. It is one of the cheapest things you will do.

What uses the most data on a trip?

Video — streamed, autoplayed in a feed, or on a call. After that it is background photo backup, which is easy to miss because it happens with the phone in your pocket.

Can I add more data if I run out?

On most plans yes, in a couple of minutes through the provider’s app. Check top-up support before buying, then start with the smaller plan.

How Much Data Do You Need for a Trip Abroad?

Published 2023-01-01 · Updated 2026-08-21 · 5 min read

Two travellers looking at a phone together on a wooded trail. — Maps, messaging and the occasional photo upload: the trip that feels data-hungry is usually the one under 1 GB a week.

Most travellers buy more data than they use. A week abroad spent on maps, messaging, searches and a reasonable amount of scrolling comes to roughly 3–5 GB. Streaming video is the one habit that changes that answer completely, and if you are not doing it, the small plans are usually the right ones.

The way to work it out is not to add up every app. Estimate hours per day for the four or five things that genuinely consume data, multiply by the length of the trip, and add a margin. Everything else is rounding error.

What an hour of each thing costs

Ranges rather than exact figures, because real usage depends on resolution, codec and how good the local network is. They are close enough to plan with.

Maps and navigation: 5–15 MB per hour. Far cheaper than people expect — the map tiles cache, and turn-by-turn is mostly position updates. Where that figure comes from.
Messaging, including photos: 10–30 MB per hour of active use. Text alone is negligible.
Web browsing and searches: 20–60 MB per hour.
Social feeds with autoplaying video: 150–300 MB per hour. This is the one people underestimate.
Music streaming: 50–150 MB per hour depending on quality setting — the exact figure per Spotify tier is set by one menu.
Video calls: 300–600 MB per hour. Audio-only calls are around a tenth of that.
Video streaming: 700 MB per hour at standard definition, 2–3 GB at HD, more at 4K.

Turning that into a plan size

Four common trip shapes, assuming wifi at the accommodation for anything heavy. Add roughly half a gigabyte per day if you will be sharing the connection with a second device.

Weekend city break, maps and messaging: 1–2 GB.
One week, normal use including social: 3–5 GB.
Two weeks, normal use: 6–10 GB.
Any length with regular video streaming or tethering a laptop: 20 GB or unlimited.

A child under a blanket watching something on a phone. — Video is the whole story. An evening of this uses more than a fortnight of maps, messaging and email put together.

Plans worth comparing

Live prices from the providers we track. Paid placements — we say so because they are.

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The two things that quietly eat an allowance

Almost every "my data vanished" story is one of these, and both happen in the background while the phone is in a pocket.

Photo and video backup. A day of holiday photos syncing to the cloud can be several gigabytes on its own. Set it to wifi-only before you leave — Google Photos keeps this under Backup, Mobile data usage, including a separate switch for backing up while roaming.
App and system updates. Phones will happily pull hundreds of megabytes of updates over cellular unless told not to.

Settings that cut usage meaningfully

Five minutes before the flight, in rough order of how much they save:

Set photo backup to wifi-only.
Turn off autoplaying video in your social apps — this alone can halve a feed’s cost.
Download offline maps for the city before you go — Google Maps lets you select an area and will restrict the download to wifi if you set it to.
Download music and shows over wifi rather than streaming them out.
Turn off automatic app updates over cellular. On an iPhone one switch does most of this: Low Data Mode pauses background tasks and automatic updates whenever you are off wifi, and it can be set for cellular and wifi separately.

Do these and the estimates above tend to come out generous rather than tight, which is the direction you want to be wrong in. What Low Data Mode actually restricts is worth knowing before you leave it on for a whole trip.

Pick the size, then compare on price per GB

Once you know roughly how many gigabytes you need, the only remaining question is what that costs. Headline prices are not comparable across plans with different allowances, which is why we rank on price per GB and show top-up support alongside it. Plans by destination, and if you are still deciding on a device, check that it supports eSIM first.

Common questions

How much data is enough for a week abroad?: For maps, messaging, browsing and some social use, 3–5 GB covers a typical week. Regular video streaming pushes that to 20 GB or an unlimited plan.
Does Google Maps use a lot of data?: No. Navigation runs at roughly 5–15 MB per hour, and downloading the area over wifi beforehand reduces it further. It is one of the cheapest things you will do.
What uses the most data on a trip?: Video — streamed, autoplayed in a feed, or on a call. After that it is background photo backup, which is easy to miss because it happens with the phone in your pocket.
Can I add more data if I run out?: On most plans yes, in a couple of minutes through the provider’s app. Check top-up support before buying, then start with the smaller plan.