If your monthly bandwidth is limited or you want to stream from a data plan on your phone you may be concerned about how much data your stream is eating up. In this article we’re going to break down how much bandwidth your stream will use.
How Much Data Is Used When Streaming?
To workout how much data you are using when streaming we first need to know what bitrate you are using to stream.
You can find this in your streamlabs or OBS stream settings. The higher your bitrate the more data you are going to use on stream.
There is a specific formula we can use to calculate this but I am also going to include a table below which shows how much data you are using per hour by streaming for the most popular bitrates.
Twitch Data Usage Calculator/Calculation
(Your Bitrate/8)/1024 x 3600 = GB/hr used
Twitch Data Usage By Bitrate
| Bitrate | GB/hr |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 0.88 |
| 3000 | 1.32 |
| 4000 | 1.76 |
| 6000 | 2.64 |
So the higher your bitrate the more data your sending to twitch servers and the more data will be used on your internet plan.
If you don’t know what bitrate to use on your stream I would recommend checking out our articles for the best streaming settings:
What Else Effects How Much Data I Use While I’m Streaming
When you are streaming it’s likely not just your stream that is using data. If you are playing an online game that will also be using data. If you browse websites or stream music while streaming that will also use some data.
If you’re conscious about how much data your stream is using due to data limitations then maybe limit these aspects on your stream and just stick to playing the game.
How Much Data Does Watching Twitch Streams Use?
If you’re wondering how much data you are using when watching a Twitch stream it’s similar to the above. It will depend on the bitrate the streamer is currently using.
Just like the above, the higher the bitrate the more data you will use. If you click on the COG on the bottom right of a twitch stream you can see the bitrate a twitch streamer is using.
Just select the cog wheel –> Advanced Settings –> Video Stats
This will display an overlay in the top left of the screen. You can see the streamers playback rate.
Right here we can see the playback rate is 5945 Kbps. This is in bits and usually roughly corresponds to the bitrate the Twitch streamer is using.
If we take this number and divide it by 8 we get the number in bytes which is 743 Kilobytes per second. We then times this by 60 and then 60 again for seconds and minutes to get the data used in an hour.
The rough bandwidth used watching this stream for an hour would be around 2.6GB.
How To Use Less Data When Watching Twitch?
If you want to lower the amount of bandwidth used you can lower the quality of your stream by using the COG wheel. If you turn the stream quality from 1080p to 720p or even lower you will then be using less data. You can check how much by pulling up the Advanced stats again and calculating like I showed above.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully this has helped you figure out how much data your stream is using while you’re chilling with your stream.
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