With TikTok, you’ll soon realize that limited cellular data plans are not enough. But before you decide to upgrade with your carrier, have you tried all other options?

In this article, you’ll find out how much data does TikTok use and the simple steps to reduce this usage. Let’s dive in!

How Much Data Does TikTok Use?

There are more than 1.1 million TikTok users in Australia, with Gen Z accounting for over a million of them. What’s more, Aussies spend almost half an hour in-app per session. 

The more you use it you’ll eventually need more and more cellular data to follow your needs. 

The app itself takes up less than 500 MB of your storage space, with a few additional megabytes each time you download a video. But the catch is actually in the cellular data usage, which is why TikTok is considered a data-hungry app.

And just how much data does TikTok use per hour? There are a lot of factors that impact how much TikTok is using, but a solid comparison is on average  1GB of cellular data per 1 hour of video.

So, if you’re spending at least an hour in-app daily, you’re going to need more than 30GB of mobile internet.

These plans are usually costly, so let’s see in what ways you can reduce the cellular data usage for TikTok.

Tips on how to use less data

1. Turn Off Cellular Data

Smartphones are designed in a way to use to fastest connection possible. So, if you connect to a wifi network but your cellular data is still running in the background, it may switch to using data if the wifi gets weak.

These tips for using less data on iPhone & Android will prevent TikTok from unplanned data feasts:

2. Limit the App Usage on Your iPhone

Since TikTok hides the time on your display when you open it, it’s difficult to track how much time you’ve spent in-app. But, you don’t have to think about it if you set an app limit. You can do so by:

  • Android – Go to Settings/Apps/TikTok and turn off the ‘Allow Background Data Usage’ option. That means it’ll only use your mobile data when you open the app.iPhone – Go to Settings/Cellular, scroll until you find TikTok, and then switch it off. That will disable the app permission to cellular data.

3. Using Data Saving Mode

Data saving mode can make a huge difference when using TikTok. For example, default settings will use up to 70MB in 5 minutes, or 840MB per hour. With data saving mode enabled, you could cut your usage by more than a half– to 30MB in 5 minutes, or 360MB within an hour.

  • iPhone – Go to Settings/Screen Time/Today (or last seven days) and tap on ‘Add Limit’. You can also password protect it if your children use your phone.Samsung Galaxy – Go to Settings/Digital Wellbeing and Parental Controls/App Timers/Tik Tok/No Timer and enter the amount of time you’d like to limit the app.

4. Using Unlimited Cellular Data

There’s always an option to purchase a plan with unlimited mobile data if there’s no way for you to cut down the TikTok usage. In Australia, these range from $35 for a speed of 20mb/s to $115 for around 180GB of data. Although some of these plans come with a data cap, they usually don’t charge if you exceed that limit, but make sure to check those details in advance.

5. Use wifi to Upload and Watch Videos

So, the first and foremost data-saving rule would be to only use TikTok for watching and uploading videos when you’re connected to a wifi network. It’s only recommended to connect to public wifi if you have a security app that will prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

6. Use TikTok Lite App

TikTok Lite app for Android is supposed to take up less storage space on your phone and use less of your cellular data. We checked it on the Google Play Store, and it takes more than 2x less space and has positive customer reviews, with an average score of 4.3.

Bottom Line

Videos are still the most data-consuming type of content. Thanks to the infinite scroll option, it’s easy to lose track of how many videos you’ve seen. But you can still enjoy the app without worrying about how much data TikTok uses by following pieces of advice from this article. We made sure to include options for everyone’s preferences, so there are plenty of ways to cut down your TikTok usage.

1. Does TikTok use a lot of cellular data?

Since it includes video content, it consumes cellular data the most. If your habits haven’t changed, but you’re suddenly using way more mobile data than before is one of the warning signs that your phone may be tapped. 

2. What uses more data, watching Youtube videos for an hour or TikTok videos for an hour?

It depends on the quality of the video. Watching Youtube on low resolution, such as 480p, will use around 264 MB per hour. With data saving mode, it can use even less.

3. Does TikTok take a lot of storage space on my phone?

Installing TikTok on your Android device is somewhat less than 100MB, whereas, on iPhone, it can go up to 500MB. And each video you download takes up additional space.

4. How long can a TikTok video be?

They started our as 15s videos and then prolonged to 30s. Now, there’s an option of uploading even 3 minutes long videos on TikTok.

5. How do I use less data on TikTok?

In this article on how much data TikTok uses, we provided several ways to use fewer data, such as turning off cellular data, limiting the app usage, using data saving mode, and more.