How much data does Google Maps use?
About 7MB an hour at turn-by-turn.
The most over-feared app in travel. Navigating for three hours a day costs about 20MB. You could do it for a month on half a gigabyte. Satellite view is the exception.
Put that on a real trip: 60 minutes a day for 10 days at turn-by-turn works out at about 0.1GB , before anything else on your phone, and before the 120MB a day that background sync quietly takes.
Google Maps data usage by quality
| Quality | Data | 1GB lasts | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turn-by-turn | 7MB/hr | 6 days | measured |
| Satellite view | 150MB/hr | 6.8 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
Heavier than Google Maps
- Messaging & email10MB/hr
- Voice calls (WhatsApp / FaceTime)38MB/hr
- Spotify43MB/hr