How much mobile data does YouTube use?

Platforms like YouTube have become essential for entertainment, information and education. However, if you use your phone’s mobile data to engage in this activity, you’re at risk of driving up the cost of your cell phone bill.

In this article, we’ll look at how much mobile data YouTube consumes, how to track it and how to reduce your YouTube data usage.

Yes, YouTube uses mobile data when no WiFi connection is available. Other than calling and sending text messages, practically everything you do on your smartphone when not connected to WiFi consumes data.

Other data-intensive applications include Google Maps, FaceTime and Netflix. Unless you have an unlimited data plan, it’s important to track how much mobile data you use each month to ensure you don’t exceed the limits of your plan.

Watching a YouTube video will consume substantially more mobile data than streaming audio or reading a webpage because a video comprises thousands of pixels that can shift multiple times per second. This means a lot of data must travel over the internet to reach your device.
 
Resolution: Video data generally consists of a series of images, also known as frames, presented in rapid succession to create the appearance of motion. The quality or resolution of these photos heavily influences the amount of data used. High-definition (HD) and ultra-high-definition (UHD) videos have more pixels per image so they require more data to display.
 
Frames: The video’s number of frames per second (fps) also influences data consumption. A higher frame-rate video is smoother and sharper but consumes more data since more images are transmitted every second.
 
Buffering: Also, when you stream a video, YouTube buffers ahead to avoid frequent pauses. Buffering downloads more of the video than you might watch if you stop it early, consuming more data.
 
Bitrate: Video bitrates affect YouTube’s data usage as well. Video bitrate refers to the amount of video data transferred at any given time. Bitrate influences how good the quality of the video is in relation to the video’s resolution and frame rate settings.

For example, high-resolution videos running at high frames per second (fps) require a high bitrate to ensure excellent quality. As a result, high-bitrate videos consume more data.

Several factors, such as the video quality you stream, the hours you spend watching videos, and the device settings, largely determine how YouTube uses data on your phone. Mobile devices offer resolutions ranging from 144p to 2160p or 4K. The higher the YouTube video quality, the more data is used.

YouTube features eight distinct video quality options that can be accessed through the options icon at the bottom of your screen.

These video settings are:

• • 2160p
  • 1440p
  • 1080p
  • 720p
  • 480p (standard)
  • 360p
  • 240p
  • 144p

YouTube recommends a bitrate of 500 to 2,000 Kbps for a 480p video (standard quality).

On average, the bitrate for 480p resolution is 1250 Kbps (1.25 MBps), which, when divided by 8 bits in one byte, is 0.156 Mbps of video. Multiplying that by 60 seconds means a 480p video uses around 9.375 MB of data per minute, which is 562.5 MB per hour of YouTube streaming. Of course, these are just estimates, actual data usage may differ.

As the video quality increases to 720p and above, YouTube also offers 60 fps for videos in addition to 30 fps.
 
Here’s a comparison of the estimated data usage for common video qualities on YouTube.

Watching YouTube on mobile data can quickly deplete your internet data plan, but there are ways you can reduce mobile data usage on YouTube:

You can use less data on YouTube by lowering the video quality. While watching a video, tap the settings icon in the top-right corner to display a menu of options. You will see the Quality option with the current video’s resolution. Tap this to change the video’s quality settings.

You can choose Auto for automatic settings, Higher picture quality for the best video resolution, or Data Saver for the lowest video quality.

This change only applies to the current video. You must do this whenever you start a new video if you wish to change the quality again.

In addition to changing the quality of the current video, the YouTube app allows you to establish a general quality preference for all videos. This setting will enable you to avoid HD playback while using mobile data, allowing you to save data.

Tap your profile image in the top-right corner of the YouTube app and select Settings > Video quality settings. You may choose options for Auto, Higher picture quality, and Data Saver as the default options. You can choose different preferences for both mobile data and WiFi.

The simplest method to reduce your data usage is to limit your data-intensive activities, like streaming YouTube videos, to situations with a reliable WiFi connection. You can also use WiFi to download videos to watch offline later.

YouTube’s autoplay feature automatically plays the next video once the current one ends. However, autoplay can waste data if it starts playing a video you don’t want to watch.

To turn off autoplay, locate the autoplay slider at the top of any video and move it to the left so that the Pause icon appears. Afterwards, YouTube will no longer automatically load new videos.

YouTube Premium is a paid subscription service that offers ad-free videos, background play and allows you to download videos to your phone and watch them offline from anywhere. Subscribing to YouTube Premium may help you save data by reducing the number of ads you see and allowing you to download videos for offline viewing.

If you have the YouTube app open but are not actively watching a video, the app may play videos on mute in the background. Muted Playback can consume significant data, especially if you have many videos in your feed.

To turn off this setting, tap your profile image in the upper-right corner and select Settings. Next, tap on General and select Playback in feeds. Finally, set it to Off or WiFi only to conserve data.