General bandwidth usage guide for GB plans

Understanding Your Bandwidth Consumption

Here is a general guide to help you estimate how much bandwidth your tasks might use with our residential proxies. Remember, these are estimates—actual usage can vary based on website complexity, video quality, and other factors.

General Web Browsing

This is your baseline for most activities. Bandwidth usage depends heavily on the type of content on a website (e.g., text-heavy sites vs. image-heavy e-commerce sites).

• Average Usage: Expect to use approximately 60-80 MB per hour for standard browsing.

Streaming Video (YouTube, Netflix, etc.)

Video is the most bandwidth-intensive activity. Your usage is almost entirely dependent on the streaming quality you select.

• Standard Definition (480p): ~300-500 MB per hour
• High Definition (720p - 1080p): ~900 MB to 3 GB per hour
• Ultra High Definition (4K): Can easily exceed 7 GB per hour

Example: An hour of HD streaming on YouTube or Netflix will typically consume about 1 GB of your data plan.

Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)

Scrolling through text and images uses relatively little data, but auto-playing videos can increase consumption dramatically.

• Scrolling Feeds (no video): Approximately 120-150 MB per hour.
• Watching Videos: Usage mirrors streaming video rates. A 5-minute HD video can use 50-80 MB.

Pro Tip: Many apps, like Facebook, have settings to reduce video quality or stop auto-play, which can significantly save your bandwidth.

Online Gaming

Bandwidth for gaming depends on the specific game. While active gameplay often uses a moderate amount of data (50-150 MB per hour), the real data drains are game downloads and updates.

• Gameplay: Highly variable, but generally less intensive than streaming video.
• Game Updates & Patches: These are the biggest factor. A single major game update can be several gigabytes.

Important: For the most accurate estimates, check the game developer’s official forums or support pages. We strongly recommend downloading large game updates over a standard Wi-Fi connection to preserve your proxy bandwidth for gameplay.

How to Choose a Plan

• Light Use (Browsing, Social Media): A smaller GB plan is often sufficient.
• Heavy Use (HD Streaming, Data Scraping, Botting): You will need a larger plan. Always monitor your usage in the client dashboard to find the perfect fit.

Updated on: 06/26/2025