How much eSIM data do you need?

Start from a real baseline

A useful anchor: Ofcom's Communications Market Report puts average mobile data use in the UK at 10.6GB per user per month, which is roughly 350MB a day. That is a full month of normal life, home wi-fi included, so it tells you two useful things. Ordinary phone use is not data hungry, and the difference between a light traveller and a heavy one is almost entirely video.

What each activity costs

The streaming figures come from Netflix's own data usage page, the audio figures from Spotify's audio quality bitrates, and the call figures from Zoom's bandwidth requirements, converted to hourly totals by counting upload and download together. Maps, messaging and social figures are working estimates rather than published numbers, because the companies involved do not publish them.

The four-step method

1. Set a baseline of 350MB a day for maps, messaging, email, boarding passes, ride hailing and casual browsing. This covers most travellers who keep video off mobile data.
2. Add your video honestly. Count the hours you will actually stream away from wi-fi and multiply by 250MB for phone-quality video. Be truthful about long train journeys and airport waits.
3. Add hotspot separately. A laptop working day is easily a gigabyte on its own before any calls, and operating system updates can add several more.
4. Multiply by days, then add 30%. The buffer is not padding. It absorbs the hotel wi-fi that turns out to be unusable, which is the single most common reason people overshoot.

Worked example: a weekend

Three days in a European city. Maps, messaging, a few restaurant searches, photos to the family group, no streaming on mobile data. That is 3 multiplied by 350MB, which is just over 1GB, plus the buffer gives about 1.4GB.

A 3GB plan covers this with room to spare, and on most destinations the 1GB tier is the only cheaper option and cuts it too fine. Buying up one tier here costs very little, and the smallest plans usually have short validity windows that a three-day trip can still outrun if you install early.

Worked example: a week

Seven days, ordinary holiday behaviour. Baseline 350MB, an hour of evening video at phone quality adding 250MB, and an hour of music at High quality adding 72MB. That is roughly 670MB a day, so 4.7GB across the week, and 6.1GB with the buffer.

The honest answer here is that a 5GB plan will probably work and will make you think about it, while a 10GB plan will not. On most destinations we track the step from 5GB to 10GB is a small absolute increase and a meaningfully lower price per gigabyte, which is exactly the trade the destination tables are sorted to expose.

Worked example: a month

Thirty days working remotely. Baseline 350MB, two hours of video calls at about 550MB each, and a laptop tethered for the working day at roughly 1GB. That is around 2.5GB a day, or 75GB across the month before any buffer at all.

No fixed-data travel plan is built for that. This is the point where an unlimited plan or a local SIM becomes the sensible route, with the caveat that unlimited plans throttle after a daily allowance and Holafly caps hotspot at 1GB a day - read what unlimited really means and eSIMs for long trips before committing.

Three habits that halve the number

• Download offline maps, playlists and one series before you leave home. This alone removes most of the variance from the estimate.
• Turn off automatic photo and video backup on mobile data. A day of holiday photos syncing in the background is a larger number than a day of browsing.
• Cap video quality in the app settings rather than relying on willpower. The difference between phone quality and HD is a factor of ten.

Now check the prices

Every destination page ranks plans by price per gigabyte, so once you have a number the choice takes seconds. If you are still weighing an eSIM against roaming or a local SIM, our comparison of the three covers that decision first.

Compare plans by price per GB

Common questions