How Much Data Does Spotify Use?
Spotify's own bitrates turned into MB per hour for Low, Normal, High and Very high, what an hour a day costs a month, and the settings that save data.
3 min readUpdated
The short answer
Spotify streams music at about 24 to 320 kbit/s depending on the quality you pick. That is roughly 11 MB an hour on Low, 43 MB on Normal, 72 MB on High and 144 MB on Very high.
Music is light next to video, but hours add up. On mobile data, pick Normal or High and download playlists on Wi-Fi.
Data per hour, by quality
Spotify publishes its bitrates. We turned them into data per hour (bitrate × 3,600 seconds, divided by 8 to get bytes):
- Low (about 24 kbit/s): about 11 MB an hour.
- Normal (about 96 kbit/s): about 43 MB an hour.
- High (about 160 kbit/s): about 72 MB an hour.
- Very high (about 320 kbit/s, Premium): about 144 MB an hour.
- Lossless (Premium): much more, often several hundred MB an hour. Keep it for Wi-Fi.
Podcasts play at about 96 kbit/s, so about 43 MB an hour, unless you set Low.
What that means for your plan
One hour a day on High is about 2 GB a month. On Very high it is about 4.3 GB a month, which is a big share of a 10 GB plan. Video is still the heavy one: an hour of Netflix in SD can use about 1 GB, so see How Much Data Does Netflix Use? as well.
Change the setting
- 1In the Spotify app, tap your profile picture, then Settings and privacy > Media Quality.
- 2Set the quality for mobile data lower than the quality for Wi-Fi.
- 3Set download quality as high as you like, then download playlists while on Wi-Fi.
- 4Turn off auto-adjust if you want the quality you chose to stay fixed.
Summary
- Spotify uses about 11 MB (Low) to 144 MB (Very high) an hour.
- One hour a day on High is about 2 GB a month.
- Lower mobile quality, download on Wi-Fi, keep Lossless for Wi-Fi.