How much data does YouTube actually use?

YouTube is the world’s most popular video streaming website. It’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole and watch several videos back-to-back or even for hours at a time. Some content is good enough to watch like a television show. Thus, it’s quite easy to rack up quite the data bill without a bit of caution. There are some correct assumptions you can make immediately. Lower resolution videos obviously don’t use nearly as much data as higher resolution videos. However, do you really know how much data YouTube uses? If not, we plan to tell you.

Our testing method is actually pretty simple. We used a total of three data monitoring tools. Android has a native data monitoring tool that we used. Additionally, we measured the data with Google’s Datally app (Google Play) as well as 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 available resolution on YouTube at the fastest possible frame rate with HDR. We viewed the video at a locked resolution for three minutes and measured the data. Unfortunately, not all resolutions are always available on mobile. Thus, for 8k, we used the Windows data monitor along with GlassWire’s PC client and averaged the results.

We also ultimately measured all available resolutions on PC because we could and used Google’s Stats for Nerds option by right-clicking the video for the bitrate numbers. We also sourced YouTube’s bitrate recommendations since they likely encode videos in those birates anyway.

There were some troubles. The PC I used had no problem playing the 8k video. However, my monitor doesn’t support HDR so I don’t believe I saw the maximum possible bitrates for 8k. Until we do further testing, our 8k numbers are estimates.

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Check the table below for our findings:

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

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

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It’s fairly easy to save data on YouTube. For starters, the app and the website both let you choose your resolution. You can simply set it to a manageable resolution. In addition, the YouTube app on mobile has a data saver function that hard locks videos to something like 480p and that looks reasonably good on most smartphone screens.

You can access this by opening the YouTube app, clicking your profile picture, and then tapping Settings. From there, tap the Data saving option and turn it on. It will reduce video quality so that you use less data.

You can also access the data saving mode while watching any YouTube video. Hit the cogwheel button, tap the Quality option, and choose the Data saver 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 bunch of mobile data. You used to need a third-party data saver app to restrict usage even more. However, YouTube built a data saving feature right into the app, so any third-party app won’t be able to do anything the main YouTube app can.

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Our first fun observation is how YouTube loads videos. It doesn’t use a continuous stream. Instead, it loads data in chunks as it pre-buffers the video as you watch. It does this quite often. This also skews the numbers a bit. Let’s say, for instance, that you only watch one minute of a four-minute video. YouTube likely loaded an extra 30-45 seconds in advance.

That means you loaded about one minute and 45 seconds of video even if you only watched one minute of it. We did not correct our data for this behavior because it is outside of our control. That is simply how YouTube uses data. We zoomed in on a section of GlassWire’s graph while measuring the 4K video stream and you can clearly see the big load at the beginning and the chunk loading happening later.

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

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