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How much data do you actually need for travel?
Most travellers use somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5GB a day. Light users who lean on Wi-Fi use less; anyone running maps all day and scrolling short video will pass 2GB. Rather than memorising a number, read on and see where you land.
“How many GB” is hard to answer because it tracks what you do, not how many days you’re away. Two people on the same five-day trip can use 1GB and 6GB. The gap comes from short video, navigation, and whether a laptop is tethered.
How much data each thing actually uses
Rough figures for common phone activities — estimates, not guarantees. Real usage shifts with quality settings, signal, and the app, but the order of magnitude is enough to plan around.
| What you’re doing | Roughly how much data |
|---|---|
| Texting, looking things up (WhatsApp, LINE) | Barely counts, under 10MB a day |
| Google Maps navigation | ~5MB per hour |
| Scrolling social, mostly photos (IG, FB, Threads) | ~150MB per hour |
| Short video (Reels, TikTok, Shorts) | ~600MB per hour and up |
| YouTube (480p / 720p) | ~260MB / ~870MB per hour |
| Video calls (FaceTime, LINE) | ~200MB per hour |
| Music streaming (Spotify, normal quality) | ~100MB per hour |
| Posting a story, sending a photo | ~5MB each |
Why video eats so much and maps barely register
The pattern in the table: moving pictures are what drain data — short video, YouTube, video calls. The reason is simple. Video constantly downloads new frames, and the higher the quality, the more it has to send every second, so an hour of 1080p can be five or six times an hour of 480p.
Maps are the opposite. Navigation pulls small vector tiles, and once the phone has loaded a stretch of road it remembers it rather than re-downloading. An hour of navigation can cost less than ten minutes of short video. The rule of thumb: moving pictures are expensive, static text and maps are cheap.
One myth worth killing: people assume navigation is a data hog because it drains the battery. Those are two different things. The battery goes because the screen stays lit and the GPS keeps running, which has nothing to do with data. What actually spikes usage is the video you tap open halfway through the drive.
The hidden drain: background data
When people can’t account for where their data went, it’s usually the phone using it in the background. The three usual culprits: photo auto-backup (every shot uploads to the cloud), app auto-updates, and cloud sync. All three quietly run over mobile data when you’re not looking.
Before travelling, spend a minute setting these to Wi-Fi only: photo backup, App Store auto-updates, and iCloud or cloud sync. Turning off photo auto-backup alone can save a heavy photographer several GB over a trip.
Tethering counts for more
If you share your phone’s hotspot with a laptop or tablet, budget more. A computer tends to auto-update, load full desktop web pages, and sync cloud files the moment it’s online, all of which eat far more than scrolling on your phone. Think of a hotspot less as “another phone” and more as “another very hungry computer.”
Three real scenarios, and what they actually cost
Three concrete days, built by adding up the rows above. Treat the numbers as ballpark, not a promise.
- Solo, five days in Tokyo, average use: an hour or two of navigation between trains (~10MB), checking restaurants and a bit of Instagram before meals (~300MB), half an hour of short video at night (~300MB), photos home (~100MB). That’s about 0.7 to 0.8GB a day, so roughly 3.5 to 4GB across five days. Most people are surprised it’s that low.
- Two of you, one sharing a hotspot: two phones’ worth of social and maps, plus the odd work message and a cloud sync on a laptop. The phone doing the tethering eats noticeably more. Over the same five days, the hotspot phone might hit 6 to 8GB while the other sits around 3GB.
- A heavy “binge plus work” day: two episodes at 720p on the train (~1.7GB), an hour of video calls (~200MB), navigation and scrolling all day (~1GB). That one day alone nudges 3GB. The catch is that a day like this usually happens once or twice a whole trip, yet you’d buy a big bundle to cover it.
The problem is visible in those three examples: usage isn’t evenly spread. Most days are cheap and one day spikes. Pre-buying a fixed size means taking your worst day and multiplying it by the whole trip, which is exactly why people end up over-buying.
How to know your own usage
The most accurate gauge is your own record. On iPhone, go to Settings → Cellular and scroll down for a per-app breakdown; on Android, Settings → Network & internet → SIMs → App data usage (path varies slightly by brand). See roughly what a normal day at home costs, match it to the three traveller types below, and you’ll size a trip far better than guessing.
Turned into days
Put those together and three kinds of traveller look like this:
- Light: mostly on Wi-Fi, occasional maps, a few photos. About 0.3 to 0.7GB a day.
- Average: maps, lookups, social scrolling, messages and photos, not much video. About 0.8 to 1.5GB a day.
- Heavy: navigation all day, short video on tap, frequent tethering or video calls. 2GB a day and up.
So “how many GB for five days in Japan” has no single answer. An average traveller might want 5 to 8GB. A Wi-Fi user could be fine on 3GB. Scroll video all day and even 10GB runs short.
Better than guessing: don’t
The catch is that none of this can be judged before you leave. Nobody knows which day they’ll get lost and run maps for hours, or whether the hotel Wi-Fi will be bad enough to live on mobile data.
That’s why pre-buying a fixed size never sat right with us. soda doesn’t make you choose: land, use it, and you’re billed by actual usage. At the end of the trip, every available combination of plans is compared and the lowest total is applied in retrospect — use a little, pay a little; use a lot and you still never pay more than if you’d picked the right plan upfront. The logic is unpacked in why you shouldn’t have to gamble on a travel data plan. For what happens when you over-buy, see what to do with leftover data.
Heading to Japan? The complete Japan eSIM guide uses this same table to size a real itinerary.
Frequently asked questions
- Does Google Maps use a lot of data?
- No. Navigation runs about 5MB an hour, less than ten minutes of short video. It drains your battery (screen on, GPS running), but that's a separate thing from data.
- How much does offline maps save?
- Download a whole city's map over Wi-Fi before you go and navigation uses almost no mobile data; only searching for new places pulls a little. Handy for Wi-Fi-only travellers or weak-signal areas, but for most people the saving is modest, because navigation is already cheap.
- How many GB do I actually need for 5 days in Japan?
- Average use is usually fine on 5 to 8GB; a Wi-Fi traveller may get by on 3GB; an all-day binger can blow past 10GB. Rather than bet on a number, a plan that bills by actual usage means you only pay for what you use.
- Can I get a refund for data I don't use?
- Most fixed plans don't refund and they expire, so leftover data is just money thrown away. That's the worst part of pre-buying; see what to do with leftover data. A soda balance doesn't expire, so the question doesn't come up.
- How much extra should I budget for tethering?
- Depends on the device. A tablet scrolling is roughly another phone; a working laptop is the one to watch, since auto-updates and cloud sync are hungry and can add 1 to 2GB in an afternoon. Set the computer's auto-updates to Wi-Fi only too.