Maps, chat and a few photos burn far less than you'd think; streaming and hotspot eat gigabytes. A simple way to size your plan.
Data anxiety leads people to overbuy. Here's roughly what everyday activities cost, so you can size a plan to how you actually travel, not to a worst-case guess.
An hour of maps navigation โ 60 MB. A 30-minute WhatsApp voice call โ 20 MB. Half an hour of Instagram or TikTok โ 300 MB. A 30-minute video call โ 350 MB. An hour of HD streaming โ 1.5 GB. A typical full day of light-to-normal use lands around 0.5โ1 GB.
Light use (maps, chat, email): about 0.35 GB/day. Normal (social, browsing, photos): about 0.8 GB/day. Heavy (streaming, video calls, hotspot): about 1.8 GB/day. Multiply by your trip length, then round up one size, most plans top up in a couple of taps if you run low, so you're never stranded. The estimator on each country page does this maths for you.