How much data does facetime use

For iOS users, FaceTime is a popular app to chat with family and friends for free. It’s only available on iPhone devices making it exclusive.

FaceTime is a video calling service from Apple and uses data instead of cellular minutes to make calls. The most frequently asked question by iOS users is if FaceTime is free to use. It depends. Though the app doesn’t use cellular minutes for calls, it uses data. If you use it over Wi-Fi, it doesn’t cost anything while on cellular data it ‘costs’. So yes, it costs. But how much data does the app use?

FaceTime uses 150MB – 180MB per hour based on your phone model and the network.

For someone that Facetime’s for between 5 to 30 minutes, the app isn’t going to take much of your data. FaceTime uses about 3MB per minute on a video call with a 10-minute call consuming slightly above 65MB of data. This translates to approximately 180MB per hour.

However, on iPhones like an older iPhone 4 version running on a 3G network, a 10-minute FaceTime video call will cost you around 30MB. If you choose to voice call instead, the app will use slightly over 2MB per minute. This difference between a video and an audio call isn’t that significant as expected. To put all these into perspective, it will cost you 3GB of data monthly to exclusively FaceTime for 17 hours.

Call duration (video & audio)	1 min	20 min	1 hour
Amount of data consumed	3MB	65MB	150 – 180MB

It’s advisable to use your Wi-Fi when making calls with your family and friends that are far away since you might end up talking for a longer period compared to someone within.

Can I track FaceTime data usage for a specific call?

You might want to know how much data you’ve spent on a single call on FaceTime. It’s possible to track the amount of cellular data consumed after a FaceTime call.

You can do this by going to the FaceTIme app on either your iPhone or iPad and tap ‘Recents’ in the phone app to view your history. On iPad, the app will automatically display your FaceTime call history. Click on the information icon marked ‘i’ found next to acontact which you had a FaceTime call with and want to see the duration. You should now be able to see the call’s data usage next to the call’s timestamp if it used cellular data. For someone looking to check the overall FaceTime data usage, you can use the following steps.

How to keep track of your overall FaceTime data consumption

To be able to use these steps, you must have FaceTime installed on your device. Go to your phone settings and select Cellular/Mobile Data. From the list, scroll down and find FaceTime. Right below the FaceTime name, you should be able to see your overall data usage. This is also applicable to any other application.

If you want to see your FaceTime data usage weekly or monthly, then you need to manually reset the current data usage as Apple doesn’t automatically do it for you. For example, your monthly data usage will start running on the day that you reset it. To perform a data reset, in the same phone settings, go back to Cellular/Mobile Data scroll down to ‘Reset Statistics’ and tap it. This will help you get accurate data usage for a specific period.

How to prevent FaceTime from using data

The best way to use FaceTime is over Wi-Fi since it’s unlimited. Sometimes, you might accidentally use your cellular data when on Wi-Fi. It’s good to turn it off for FaceTime which ensures that it can only be used on Wi-Fi. Launch Settings on your phone and click on Cellular. Next, scroll through the app list and find FaceTime. Toggle off cellular data for Facetime.

Final Thoughts

FaceTime is an easy, safe, and secure app for communicating with family and friends, especially those far away. Despite it being free, it uses the internet and cellular data is not ideal for use because the app uses a lot of bandwidth. The best way to use FaceTime is through Wi-Fi.

FAQs

Do FaceTime calls show on my phone bill?

No, FaceTime calls don’t show on your phone bills directly because they don’t use your cellular minutes and will only cost you if you use your cellular data instead of Wi-Fi but won’t show up on your bill specifically as ‘FaceTime’.

How often should I reset statistics for my apps?

There’s no specific duration, however, for the sake of keeping track of data usage, you should reset it once a month. This will give you a correct figure of how much cellular data you’ve spent in a month and help you to plan for a new month.