How much data does Podcasts use?
About 60MB an hour at streaming.
Spoken word compresses beautifully. Download them on wifi anyway. It costs you nothing to be safe.
Put that on a real trip: 60 minutes a day for 10 days at streaming works out at about 0.6GB , before anything else on your phone, and before the 120MB a day that background sync quietly takes.
Podcasts data usage by quality
| Quality | Data | 1GB lasts | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Streaming | 60MB/hr | 17 hours | bitrate |
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 Podcasts
- Spotify43MB/hr
- Voice calls (WhatsApp / FaceTime)38MB/hr
- Messaging & email10MB/hr
Heavier than Podcasts
- Web browsing70MB/hr
- X / Twitter100MB/hr
- Apple Music115MB/hr