Is 1 GB enough for a week abroad?

It is if the use is messaging, maps, and a few photos uploaded to cloud — typically under 100 MB per day. It is not if there's any video streaming or video calling, which can burn 1 GB in 90 minutes alone.

Does Google Maps use a lot of data?

Online turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps uses around 5–10 MB per hour of driving, plus tile downloads when zooming or scrolling on new areas. Downloading offline maps before a trip cuts the live usage to near zero. A week of moderate map use is typically under 200 MB.

What about Instagram and TikTok?

Vertical-video feeds in either app burn 60–150 MB per 10 minutes of scrolling depending on resolution. An hour a day for a week is 5–10 GB on its own.

What counts as 'heavy' data use on a travel eSIM?

Anything over 1 GB per day. Most travel-eSIM 'unlimited' plans cap the full-speed allowance well below that — Airalo throttles to 1 Mbps after 3 GB per day, for example. Heavy users either pick a high-cap capped plan or accept the throttle.

How much eSIM data do you actually need for a trip?

A practical data budget for most travel cases is between 1 GB and 3 GB per week. Light users — messaging, maps with offline tiles downloaded ahead of the trip, occasional photo uploads — finish a 7-day trip on around 500 MB. Heavy users — daily video calls, streaming on flights, social-media video feeds — burn through 1 GB before lunch on day one.

The breakdown by typical activity, measured in real-world conditions, is roughly:

Messaging (WhatsApp, iMessage) — under 5 MB per hour of active use, including a few voice notes. Negligible.
Maps with online navigation — 5–10 MB per hour. Downloading offline tiles before the trip cuts that to under 1 MB per hour.
Email, news, banking — 20–50 MB per day for normal use. Higher if email is image-heavy.
Social feeds (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts) — 60–150 MB per 10 minutes, depending on resolution. This is the most common data sink. An hour a day for a week is 5–10 GB on its own.
Video calls (FaceTime, Zoom, Google Meet) — 300–500 MB per hour at standard quality, 1 GB+ at HD. A daily 30-minute work call is roughly 1 GB per week.
Streaming (Netflix, YouTube) — 1–3 GB per hour at 720p–1080p. Mostly worth doing on hotel Wi-Fi.

The “unlimited” travel-eSIM plans on the market are not actually unlimited at full speed. Airalo’s published fair-use policy throttles unlimited plans to 1 Mbps after 3 GB per day, then resets at midnight UTC — confirmed against the published policy and on the Airalo scorecard. Other providers cap at different daily allowances or different post-throttle speeds; the policy figures are visible on each provider’s scorecard.

The practical implication: if a daily use case exceeds 3 GB and the trip is long, an “unlimited” plan throttles to slow-2G for the rest of every day. A high-cap capped plan (e.g. 20 GB / 30 days) is often a better fit than the unlimited tier in that scenario, despite sounding less generous on paper. The Best for unlimited data use-case ranking re-weights the relevant dimensions and surfaces providers whose unlimited tiers have less aggressive throttles.

How to estimate in advance: subtract video calls, social-video feeds, and streaming as separate line items, then add 100–200 MB per day for everything else. A 10-day trip with two video calls per week, 30 minutes of Instagram per day, and normal maps/messaging works out to roughly 8 GB. A 10-day trip with no video calls, downloaded offline maps, and minimal social media is closer to 1 GB.

Buying margin is cheap. Going under runs out at the airport on day eight. Most travelers should size to peak-week usage plus 50%, and pick a capped plan that lands at or above that number. The eSIMBench leaderboard sorts by overall bench score; the coupons page has the working codes when it’s time to buy.

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