How much data does YouTube actually use? — Android Authority

YouTube is the world’s most popular video streaming website. It’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole and watch multiple videos in a row or even for hours on end. Some content is good enough to watch a television program. So it is quite easy to earn a decent data bill without any caution. There are some correct assumptions you can make right away. Lower resolution videos obviously don’t use as much data as higher resolution videos. However, do you really know how much data YouTube uses? If not, we intend to tell you.

Our testing method is actually quite simple. We used a total of three data monitoring tools. Android has a native data monitoring tool that we used. In addition, we measured the data with Google’s Datally app (Google Play) and GlassWire (Google Play). To get our numbers, we measured with all three apps and averaged the results.

We used this 8k, 60FPS, HDR Video Tour of Peru because Peru is a beautiful place, and also this video had every resolution available on YouTube with the fastest possible frame rate with HDR. We watched the video at a locked resolution for three minutes and measured the data. Unfortunately, not all resolutions are always available on mobile. So for 8k we used the Windows data monitor along with GlassWire’s pc client and the average of the results.

We also ended up measuring all the resolutions available on PC because we could and used Google’s Stats for Nerds option by right clicking on the video for the bitrate numbers. We also source recommendations for bitrates from YouTube because they probably encode videos in those birates anyway.

There were some problems. The PC I was using had no problem playing the 8k video. My monitor doesn’t support HDR though, so I don’t believe I’ve seen the maximum possible bitrates for 8k. Until we test further, our 8k numbers are estimates.

---

See the table below for our findings:

Video quality	Resolution (pixels)	Frame rate (FPS)	Bit rate (average)	Data used per minute	Data used per 60 minutes
Video quality 144p	Resolution (pixels) 256×144	Frame rate (FPS) 30	Bit rate (average) 80-100Kbps	Data used per minute 0.5-1.5MB	Data used per 60 minutes 30-90MB
Video quality 240p	Resolution (pixels) 426×240	Frame rate (FPS) 30	Bit rate (average) 300-700Kbps	Data used per minute 3-4.5MB	Data used per 60 minutes 180-250MB
Video quality 360p	Resolution (pixels) 640×360	Frame rate (FPS) 30	Bit rate (average) 400-1,000Kbps	Data used per minute 5-7.5MB	Data used per 60 minutes 300-450MB
Video quality 480p	Resolution (pixels) 854×480	Frame rate (FPS) 30	Bit rate (average) 500-2,000Kbps	Data used per minute 8-11MB	Data used per 60 minutes 480-660MB
Video quality 720p (HD)	Resolution (pixels) 1280×720	Frame rate (FPS) 30-60	Bit rate (average) 1.5-6.0Mbps	Data used per minute 20-45MB	Data used per 60 minutes 1.2-2.7GB
Video quality 1080p (FHD)	Resolution (pixels) 1920×1080	Frame rate (FPS) 30-60	Bit rate (average) 3.0-9.0Mbps	Data used per minute 50-68MB	Data used per 60 minutes 2.5-4.1GB
Video quality 1440p (QHD)	Resolution (pixels) 2560×1440	Frame rate (FPS) 30-60	Bit rate (average) 6.0-18.0Mbps	Data used per minute 45-135MB	Data used per 60 minutes 2.7-8.1GB
Video quality 2160p (4k) (UHD)	Resolution (pixels) 3840×2160	Frame rate (FPS) 30-60	Bit rate (average) 13.0-51.0Mbps	Data used per minute 95-385MB	Data used per 60 minutes 5.5-23.0GB
Video quality 4320p (8k) (FUHD)	Resolution (pixels) 7680×4320	Frame rate (FPS) 30-60	Bit rate (average) 20-50 Mbps (estimated @30FPS)	Data used per minute 150-375MB (estimated at 30FPS)	Data used per 60 minutes 9.0-22.5 GB (estimated @30FPS)

We want to clarify the data a bit. YouTube uses a variable bitrate. So the amount of data you use should fall somewhere between the high and low numbers we posted above. We understand that the difference between low and high can vary significantly at higher resolutions, but a 4K video uses much less data at a lower bitrate and 30FPS than at 60FPS and a higher bitrate. We are quite confident that your total data usage will fall within the applicable ranges listed above.

---

It is quite easy to save data to YouTube. For starters, the app and website let you choose your resolution. You can easily set it to a manageable resolution. In addition, the YouTube app on mobile has a data saver feature that hard-locks videos down to around 480p and looks pretty good on most smartphone screens.

You can access this by opening the YouTube app, clicking your profile picture, and then clicking . to tap Settings. From there, tap the Saving data option and enable it. It reduces the video quality, so you use less data.

You can also access data saving mode while watching a YouTube video. Press the cogwheel button, tap the Quality option, and choose the Data Saving option there.

There are other ways to do it. We recommend being on Wi-Fi as often as possible so you don’t use a ton of mobile data. It used to be that you needed a third-party data saver app to limit usage even more. However, YouTube has built a data saver feature right into the app, so a third-party app can’t do anything that the main YouTube app can.

---

Our first fun observation is how YouTube loads videos. It does not use a continuous flow. Instead, it loads data in chunks while pre-buffering the video as you watch. It does this quite often. This also skews the numbers a bit. For example, let’s say you’re only watching one minute of a four-minute video. YouTube probably loaded an extra 30-45 seconds in advance.

That means you’ve loaded about one minute and 45 seconds of video, even if you only watched it for one minute. We have not corrected our data for this behavior as it is beyond our control. That’s just how YouTube uses data. We zoomed in on a portion of GlassWire’s graph as we measured the 4K video stream and you can clearly see the heavy load at the beginning and the chunk loading later on.

Second, the difference between a 4K video and a 144p video is really huge. We’ve added the screenshot above so you can see it for yourself. The 144p test is the small bumps on the left and the 4K test is the massive amount of use on the right. Since the data is squashed together to show two separate tests, you can’t really see the chunk loading. However, what you can see is the huge difference in data usage and how much more intense it is on your data connection.

---

Have you ever tried to measure your YouTube data rates? If yes, tell us your results in the comments.