How much eSIM data to take: a scenario breakdown
There's no single right answer to 'how many gigabytes should I get' — a traveler who checks a map and texts occasionally uses a fraction of what someone on video calls all day for remote work burns through. Below is not one number but a breakdown by concrete usage scenarios: stack your own habits like building blocks and you'll land on an estimate that actually matches your trip.
The baseline: maps, messengers, ride-hailing
Navigation is the most underestimated line item: the map itself mostly runs offline and from cache, but route calculation, live traffic and repeated rerouting when you change direction all draw data continuously, especially in dense city traffic. Ride-hailing and car-sharing apps add background location transmission on top of that for the whole ride.
Text and voice messages in messaging apps barely register on their own. But those same apps quietly preload link previews, chat photos and status updates in the background, so actual usage runs higher than the message count alone would suggest.
- Maps and navigation without offline mode — roughly 0.3–0.7 GB a day with active use
- Ride-hailing and car-sharing — light background use, adds 50–100 MB a day
- Messengers (text, voice notes, photos) — roughly 0.3–0.5 GB a day with active chatting
- Baseline total without video — roughly 1–1.5 GB a day
Social feeds: where usage quietly climbs
Scrolling a feed with autoplay video is the least predictable line item, because usage depends not on time spent but on the quality of video that loaded automatically. Half an hour of scrolling short-form video in good quality can eat more data than an entire day of messaging.
If the trip involves actively shooting and posting stories or reels, budget a separate allowance for uploads specifically — outgoing photo and video traffic in high resolution burns through data just as fast as incoming.
Cap video autoplay quality in your social apps' settings for the trip — it's the simplest way to save data without giving up convenience.
Video and streaming: count it by viewing hours
Video is the one category you can estimate almost exactly, by hours watched rather than days traveled. An hour of standard-quality video usually runs about 0.7–1 GB, while high quality or HD pushes that same hour to 1.5–3 GB.
If video is only needed occasionally — a movie on the plane or a show at the hotel in the evening — it's smarter to download it ahead of time over Wi-Fi rather than stream it on mobile data, which drops mobile usage to zero regardless of how much you watch.
Video calls and remote work
A standard-quality video call uses roughly 300–500 MB per hour per person, and a group call with several cameras on runs noticeably higher, especially with screen sharing. For work calls on a trip, it's worth budgeting a separate daily allowance rather than folding them into everyday usage.
Remote work adds ongoing background sync on top of the calls themselves: cloud drives, email with attachments, team messengers and a VPN connection all keep a steady, low but nonzero draw going through the whole workday, even between calls.
- One-on-one video call, one hour — roughly 0.3–0.5 GB
- Group call with cameras on, one hour — 0.6 GB and up
- Screen sharing adds a noticeable amount on top of a normal call
- Background email and cloud sync over a workday — 0.2–0.4 GB even without calls
Hotspotting the internet for a family
When one phone shares its connection with the rest of the family over a hotspot, usage stops being per-person and becomes a running total across every device connected to it. A kid's tablet playing video on a long drive or a laptop for evening work at the hotel can easily outstrip the phone owner's own usage several times over.
Before the trip, check the plan page to confirm the chosen plan supports hotspot sharing — some plans allow it without limits, others have separate terms for it.
If you plan to hotspot for the whole family, budget three to four times a single person's usual scenario — that leaves enough headroom even for an active day of the kids watching video.
Putting your own estimate together
There's no universal figure, but there is a simple way to size a plan for a specific trip: add up your baseline daily scenario, add the hours of video you'd typically watch, factor in video calls if any are planned, and multiply the total by the number of active travel days, with roughly 20% extra for the unexpected — downloading offline maps for a new region, app updates, or simply a busier day than usual.
- Light scenario (maps, messengers, a little social media) — roughly 0.5–1 GB a day
- Medium scenario (plus social video and occasional streaming) — roughly 1.5–3 GB a day
- Heavy scenario (video, video calls, work) — 3–5 GB a day and up
- Add roughly 20% buffer to any scenario for the unexpected
- If the plan runs out early, a top-up package can be bought right from the plan page