How much mobile data do I need?

Even if you’re on a budget, you can get a mobile plan with a lot of monthly data. There are also some great SIM only deals around at the moment.

To help you make the most of lots of data on your phone, we’ve rounded up all you need to know below.

When you’re not connected to a Wi-Fi network, your phone is most likely always using up mobile data (unless you’ve turned data off). For example, email and messaging apps such as Gmail and WhatsApp refresh in the background, and as soon as a message comes in, it’ll use data (although they tend not to use that much unless you’re receiving a picture or video).

If you use your phone to play online games, scroll through Instagram or TikTok, steam movies or music, these will use up a fair bit of data. Before you start working out how much data you need, here’s a quick reminder of the numbers behind the letters.

• MB stands for a megabyte. 1024 kilobytes, in other words.
• GB stands for a gigabyte. That’s 1024 megabytes worth of data.

You’ll find more facts on data usage here.

Let’s take a hefty 50GB plan as an example. With that amount of data you’ll be able to stream over 15 hours of HD Netflix content a month. That’s the whole of Stranger Things season 4, with a couple of hours to spare. Nice! Or if you’re into music, 50GB works out at 3 weeks of solid high-quality Spotify tunes.

It’s also worth mention tethering - an activity that can potentially use up a lot of data. Tethering is when you connect a laptop (or other mobile device) to your smartphone, and then use your mobile network connection to connect to the internet. This can come in really handy if you need to use your laptop when there’s no Wi-Fi, but remember - doing stuff on a laptop uses more data than doing the same thing on a phone.

It’s a good idea to check your usage regularly, just to make sure your mobile plan has all the data you need.

The fastest way to check your data allowance is to log into My Account on the iD Mobile website or to use the iD Mobile app. Head to ‘My Allowances’ to see how much of your monthly data allowance is left. You can then tap on it to drill down deeper into your usage summary.

If you regularly run low on data - and need to act cautiously to stop running out – that’s another sign you should think about upgrading. Then you can do all the things you like doing, every day of the month.

And of course – if you’re always running out of data days before your allowances refresh - you should definitely think about upgrading to a plan with more data.

Buy an add-on
You can always buy add-ons to get more data, but they’re more of a ‘one-off’ option rather than something you should be doing every month. It’ll work out cheaper in the long run to go for a plan with the proper amount of data from the get-go.

Upgrade your plan
Upgrading your iD Mobile phone plan is a great way of getting more data to do all the things you love doing. If you’re eligible, you can easily choose a plan with more allowances to avoid running out and racking up additional charges.
It works the other way too. If you’ve always got some data left, why not try and save some pennies and go for a lower cost plan with a smaller allowance?
Check if you can upgrade your iD Mobile phone plan today.

Change your plan

A plan change lets you choose a different monthly cost and set of allowances, without changing your handset.

You’ll be able to change your plan as long as you meet the following criteria:

• You've been with us for at least 30 days.
• You haven’t changed plans in the last 31 days.
• You have an active Direct Debit with us.
• You haven’t got a disconnection request pending.

All you have to do is:

• Log into the iD Mobile App or My Account online.
• Go to My Account > My Plan > Change my plan.
• Choose a new plan.
• Click Confirm.

We hope you find our advice on getting the right amount of mobile data useful. Will you be adding more to your plan? What do you use most of your mobile data for? Share your comments with the Community below!