How much data does a video call use per hour?

An hour of HD video on Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet uses roughly 0.5 to 1.8 GB in each direction, going by the bitrates the three companies publish themselves. Counted both ways, that is about 1 to 3.6 GB an hour, and the direction matters: your camera sends as much as the call receives, and a phone on mobile data is billed for both. Audio only is a different order of magnitude, about 25 to 45 MB each way per hour. The quick conversion behind every figure here: multiply megabits per second by 450 to get megabytes per hour, because an hour is 3,600 seconds and a byte is 8 bits.

Zoom, Teams and Meet in one table

Each company publishes its figures on a separate page, in different units and with different labels. Zoom calls its numbers recommended bandwidth, Microsoft gives Teams minimum, recommended and best performance figures, and Google marks Meet's figures "up to", plus an average for large organizations. The table converts all of them to data per hour and keeps upload and download apart, using 1 GB as 1,000 MB.

In group calls the download side grows while upload does not, because you receive several people but send only yourself. The gap between audio and video is huge: a Zoom 720p call moves roughly 15 to 20 times as much data as the same hour with cameras off.

Why the Zoom figures you find disagree

Search this question and most results repeat the same set: 540 MB an hour at 480p, 1.08 GB at 720p and 1.62 GB at 1080p. They do not match what Zoom currently publishes, and the reason is arithmetic.

Zoom's table has no 480p row at all. Its lowest video tier is "high quality" at 600 kbps, 270 MB an hour each way. The 540 MB figure is exactly Zoom's 720p rate, 1.2 Mbps, for one direction only. The 1.08 GB figure is that same 720p call counted in both directions. The 1.62 GB figure matches no current Zoom number. Zoom now recommends 3.8 Mbps up and 3.0 Mbps down for 1080p, which is 1.71 GB sent plus 1.35 GB received, a little over 3 GB in total.

The same pages usually quote audio at 27 to 36 MB an hour, which is Zoom's 60 to 80 kbps in one direction. So within one list, some rows count both directions and some count one, without saying which.

Upload counts on a phone plan

On home broadband there is rarely a monthly cap, so a call's data mostly matters as speed, the territory of how much internet speed you actually need, which sizes a connection in megabits per second rather than gigabytes.

On mobile data, the allowance is one pool and both directions draw from it. While your camera is on, the phone sends video as well as receiving it. A one hour Zoom call at 720p is 1.08 GB off the allowance, not the 540 MB most pages lead with. A weekly one hour Teams meeting at the recommended rates is close to 3 GB each time, roughly 12 GB a month.

Tethering a laptop to a phone hotspot is the same: the laptop's call is the phone's data. If the alternative is a cafe or hotel network, what is still risky on public wifi covers the few settings that matter before you join one.

Screen sharing and audio only

Screen sharing is where the three vendors disagree most. Zoom lists 50 to 75 kbps for a share without a video thumbnail and 50 to 150 kbps with one, which is under 70 MB an hour. Microsoft's recommended planning figure for a Teams screen share is 1,500 kbps in a one to one call and 2,500 kbps in a meeting. Google notes that a still screen share in Meet uses no more bandwidth after it loads. The common thread is motion: a static slide costs almost nothing, a shared video about as much as a camera.

Audio only is the reliable way to make a call cheap. Zoom's 60 to 80 kbps, Teams' recommended 58 kbps and Meet's 100 kbps for small organizations all land between roughly 50 and 90 MB an hour counted both ways. Microsoft also states that when bandwidth runs short, Teams prioritizes audio quality over video quality.

What a real call actually uses

Every figure in the table is a planning number, not a meter reading. The apps adapt underneath them. Zoom says its bandwidth use is optimized for each participant's network. Google says that if your network lacks the bandwidth, Meet lowers the video definition. Microsoft says Teams is conservative with bandwidth and can deliver HD video in under 1.5 Mbps.

The one published average comes from Google: 1 Mbps outbound and 1.3 Mbps inbound per participant in a video meeting, for large organizations. That is about 1 GB an hour both ways, a sensible expectation for an ordinary work call.

Adapting works in both directions, though. Microsoft says that when more bandwidth is available, quality and usage increase, which is why the best performance row exists. On a fast fiber line with nothing else competing, a Teams call can climb toward 4 Mbps each way, and an hour of that is 3.6 GB. A faster connection gives the app room to spend more, not less.

Three limits apply to all of this. The figures are per device, so Microsoft points out that joining the same meeting on a laptop and a phone makes two endpoints and roughly doubles the traffic. Webinars and live streams have separate figures not covered here. And this page covers only the three apps whose makers publish bitrates. Other calling apps are left out rather than estimated.

How video calls compare with streaming

An HD stream typically runs at 5 to 8 Mbps, which is 2.3 to 3.6 GB an hour, all of it download. A 720p call on Zoom or Meet receives about 0.5 to 0.8 GB in the same hour. But a call also sends, continuously, and upload is the smaller side of most home connections.

That is why a call breaks up while a film in the next room plays fine. What makes a stream buffer is mostly download and wifi, while a call that freezes for other people is usually your upload running out. Reading the upload and jitter lines on a speed test tells you which one you have, and if both look fine on a cable but not on wifi, the problem is inside the house rather than on the line.

The settings that cut call data

1. Turn the camera off when you are not speaking. On mobile data that removes half the bill.
2. Use speaker view instead of a big gallery. Zoom's own figures double from 2.0 to 4.0 Mbps received when the gallery grows from 25 to 49 tiles.
3. Join on one device. A laptop and a phone in the same meeting are two endpoints, each with its own stream.
4. Share slides, not video. A still share costs almost nothing.
5. Move to wifi when you can, and use the faster band. Microsoft notes the 5 GHz band suits real time media better than 2.4 GHz, and what each wifi band trades away explains why the phone may not pick it on its own. If the room where you take calls has weak signal, mesh, an extender or a cable fixes that better than a bigger plan.

To see whether your home connection has the upload to carry calls and everything else at the same time, the speed calculator adds a video call to the rest of your household's use.