Google Maps, WhatsApp, Netflix: Data Use Abroad

Navigation is tiny — active Google Maps directions use only about 5–10 MB per hour. Messaging is almost free for text and modest for calls. The budget-killer is video: Netflix, YouTube and streaming apps can burn through 1–3 GB an hour in HD, and autoplaying social feeds are not far behind at 100–200 MB an hour. Knowing which apps are cheap and which are expensive is the whole game when you are travelling on a data plan rather than an unlimited home contract.

Below is the approximate hourly cost of the apps travellers lean on most, and a practical way to trim each one. All figures are typical ranges, not exact promises — real usage varies with quality settings, signal and how you use each app — but they are accurate enough to plan around.

Google Maps & navigation

Maps is the app travellers worry about most and the one they should worry about least. Actively following turn-by-turn directions sips data. What costs more is repeatedly searching for places, panning around unfamiliar areas and loading fresh map tiles — so the fix is to load the area once, in advance.

Activity	Approx. per hour	Trim it by…
Active navigation	≈5–10 MB	Downloading the area offline before you go
Searching and browsing the map	≈20–40 MB	Saving pins and offline maps on Wi-Fi

Download an offline map of your destination while you are still on home Wi-Fi. Turn-by-turn directions then run almost entirely from the stored map, dropping your navigation cost close to zero and giving you a backup for the moments when signal disappears in a tunnel or a backstreet.

WhatsApp, iMessage & messaging

Text messaging is effectively free — you could chat all week and barely register it on your data counter. Calls cost more, and the real surprise for most people is media auto-download: every photo and video dropped into a busy group chat quietly downloads over your travel plan unless you tell it not to.

Activity	Approx. per hour	Trim it by…
Text messaging	under 1 MB	Nothing needed — it's negligible
Voice calls	≈30–60 MB (0.5–1 MB/min)	Using Wi-Fi for long calls
Video calls	≈300–500 MB	Switching to audio-only on the move
Photo & video auto-download	Varies — often the hidden cost