How much data does Web browsing use?
About 70MB an hour at browsing.
Steady and unremarkable. Ad-heavy news sites run higher than this; reader mode runs far lower.
Put that on a real trip: 60 minutes a day for 10 days at browsing works out at about 0.7GB , before anything else on your phone, and before the 120MB a day that background sync quietly takes.
Web browsing data usage by quality
| Quality | Data | 1GB lasts | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing | 70MB/hr | 15 hours | measured |
Published means the service states the figure itself. Bitrate means it's arithmetic from a documented stream rate. Measured means it's corroborated across independent tests. Real usage moves with signal strength and how aggressively the app pre-buffers.
How that compares
Lighter than Web browsing
- Podcasts60MB/hr
- Spotify43MB/hr
- Voice calls (WhatsApp / FaceTime)38MB/hr
Heavier than Web browsing
- X / Twitter100MB/hr
- Apple Music115MB/hr
- Facebook120MB/hr