"Is 1 GB a day enough?" is the question behind almost every eSIM purchase, and it is nearly impossible to answer from a plan page. So here is the useful version: what each app actually costs you in data, and what that adds up to on a normal day in Morocco.
One caveat first, stated plainly: the figures below are typical ranges, not guarantees. Data use swings enormously with video quality, autoplay settings and how good the signal is. Treat them as orders of magnitude — which is all you need to size a plan.
The cheap things (you will never notice these)
| Activity | Typical data | In a day |
|---|---|---|
| Text messaging (WhatsApp, iMessage) | a few KB per message | under 5 MB |
| Email, no big attachments | ~20–50 KB each | a few MB |
| Web browsing, article pages | ~1–3 MB per page | 30–100 MB |
| Maps navigation | ~3–5 MB per hour | 15–40 MB |
| Music streaming, normal quality | ~70–150 MB per hour | varies |
The one that surprises people is navigation. Turn-by-turn maps feel like they should be expensive and they are not: the map tiles are small and heavily cached. Driving for six hours across the country might cost you 30 MB. Navigation is not what empties a plan.
The expensive things (these are what actually drain it)
| Activity | Typical data |
|---|---|
| Scrolling a video feed (Instagram, TikTok, Reels) | ~100–250 MB per 15 minutes |
| Video call (WhatsApp, FaceTime) | ~3–5 MB per minute |
| Voice call over the internet | ~0.3–0.5 MB per minute |
| Streaming video at 1080p | ~1.5–3 GB per hour |
| Streaming video at 480p | ~0.5–0.7 GB per hour |
| Uploading 20 photos to a cloud backup | ~60–200 MB |
| A phone OS update | 1–6 GB |
Two entries there deserve a warning of their own.
Video feeds. Fifteen idle minutes of scrolling Reels or TikTok can cost more than an entire day of messaging, navigation and browsing put together. It is the single biggest difference between a traveller who never thinks about data and one who runs out by Wednesday.
Automatic OS and app updates. A phone that decides to update itself over mobile data can consume gigabytes without you touching it. Turn off automatic updates over cellular before you travel — it is the most common way people lose a plan to something they did not even want.
What a normal day in Morocco actually looks like
Putting the typical figures together for three realistic travellers:
| Traveller | What they do | Estimated day |
|---|---|---|
| Light | Messaging, maps, a few searches, photos saved locally | ~100–200 MB |
| Typical | All of the above, plus social feeds, a few video calls, cloud photo backup | ~500 MB – 1 GB |
| Heavy | All of the above, plus streaming video and tethering a laptop | 2 GB and up |
This is why a 1 GB daily allowance is the size it is: it comfortably covers the light and typical patterns, and the heavy pattern is almost always video rather than anything essential.
So is 1 GB a day enough?
For the overwhelming majority of trips, yes — with one honest qualification.
On our plans you get 1 GB per day at full 4G/5G speed, then reduced speed until the allowance resets the next day. That structure matters more than the number. If you do burn through the gigabyte on a heavy afternoon, you are not cut off and you are not asked to buy anything: messaging, maps and browsing keep working at reduced speed, and you start the next morning with a full allowance again.
What reduced speed will not do comfortably is stream high-definition video. If that is essential to your trip, plan for hotel Wi-Fi rather than a bigger mobile plan — it is cheaper and it works better.
Five settings that cut your use immediately
- Turn off automatic app and OS updates over mobile data. The single biggest saving available.
- Turn off video autoplay in Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok. This alone often halves a typical day.
- Download your maps before you fly, while you are on home Wi-Fi.
- Set cloud photo backup to Wi-Fi only. Holiday photos are large and they upload constantly.
- Drop streaming quality if you do watch something — 480p costs roughly a quarter of 1080p.
Do those five and a typical traveller lands nearer 300 MB a day than 1 GB.
Before you choose a plan
Size the plan to the number of days, not to a data figure — the daily allowance resets either way. You can see the full list of plan lengths and prices here, and check your handset free with our compatibility tool before buying anything.
The iPhone settings, screen by screen
Four settings do most of the saving. They take five minutes and should be done before departure, on your own Wi-Fi.
- Wi-Fi Assist. Settings, Mobile Data, at the very bottom. Left on, it quietly switches to mobile data whenever Wi-Fi weakens. Useful at home, expensive abroad. Turn it off.
- Automatic updates. Settings, General, Software Update, Automatic Updates. Disable downloads over mobile data.
- Background App Refresh. Settings, General, Background App Refresh. Set it to Wi-Fi only. Otherwise dozens of apps refresh all day without you opening any of them.
- Photos and iCloud. Settings, Photos, then Mobile Data. Turn uploads off or limit them. Holiday photos are large and sync continuously.
A fifth is worth it if you want to be careful: Low Data Mode, in the options for the cellular line. It reduces video quality and suspends some background tasks without breaking anything.
The same settings on Android
Labels vary by manufacturer, but the four levers are identical.
- Data Saver, under Network and Internet. It blocks background traffic for apps you are not actively using.
- Play Store updates, in Play Store settings, Network preferences: auto-update over Wi-Fi only.
- Google Photos backup: set backup to Wi-Fi only.
- Per-app restriction: for the heaviest apps you can cut mobile data access app by app.
On both systems, also download your maps, music and episodes before you leave. It is the single action that moves the most gigabytes off the plan and onto Wi-Fi.
Tracking usage during the trip
Two counters exist and they do not say the same thing.
The phone's counter adds up everything the device has exchanged since it was last reset. It is accurate but it also counts your home line, so look at the specific line and reset it on arrival to get a readable figure.
The provider's counter is the one that governs the allowance, but it updates with a lag. Do not panic at a few tens of megabytes of disagreement between the two.
In practice the only useful habit is to look once, on the second evening. If you are well under a gigabyte you will not think about it again all trip. If you are over, you know which setting to change.
What actually happens when you hit the limit
The change is gradual and unannounced: there is no message, pages simply take longer to load their images.
At reduced speed, what still works comfortably: text messaging, internet voice calls, maps already loaded, web search, email without attachments, booking a restaurant or a taxi.
What becomes painful: high-definition video, large photo galleries, big downloads, group video calls.
And the point that matters most: the counter resets after 24 hours. A heavy day has no consequence for the next one, which is exactly the difference from a total bucket that, once empty, stays empty for the rest of the trip. Our piece on whether unlimited really means unlimited goes into the detail.
Three typical weeks, in gigabytes
Working from the orders of magnitude above, here is what seven days looks like for three profiles. These are estimates, not guarantees.
- Light — messaging, maps, a few searches, photos kept locally: roughly 1 to 1.5 GB across the week. Comfortably under the allowance every day.
- Typical — the same plus social feeds, a few video calls and photo backup: roughly 4 to 7 GB across the week, meaning under the allowance most days and over it on one or two.
- Heavy — the same plus streaming and tethering a laptop: 15 GB and up, so reduced speed late in the day fairly regularly.
The typical profile describes the large majority of travellers, and it explains why the daily allowance is the size it is: it covers the week with no arithmetic, at the cost of one or two slowed evenings at worst.
The tethering case
Sharing your connection does not consume differently in itself: the connected devices do the consuming, and they consume as they would on their own.
The difference is that a laptop does not behave like a phone. It downloads system updates, syncs whole folders and loads far heavier pages. An hour of laptop work over a hotspot can cost more than a full day of phone use.
Before tethering a laptop, set the connection to metered: both Windows and macOS offer this, and it suspends automatic updates and syncing.
Four myths about data use
"GPS uses a huge amount of data." False, and it is the most widespread belief. Map tiles cache, and a full day of driving costs a few tens of megabytes. What costs money is video, not the map.
"WhatsApp calls use as much as a video call." No: an order of magnitude separates them. An internet voice call is measured in fractions of a megabyte per minute, a video call in several megabytes.
"Nothing is used in aeroplane mode." True while it stays on, but many travellers switch it off at landing and forget that every app then synchronises at once after hours of waiting. The first minutes after landing are often the heaviest of the trip.
"Closing apps saves data." Marginally. What consumes in the background is scheduled syncing, not apps left open. The background refresh setting does far more than closing things by hand.
A note on speed versus volume
People often conflate two different things. Volume is how much you download; speed is how fast it arrives. A reduced speed does not mean a reduced allowance — you can still move as much data, it simply takes longer.
That distinction explains why the daily reset matters so much. After the full-speed gigabyte you are not cut off and not capped; you are slowed. For messaging and maps the difference is barely perceptible. For video it is decisive. Which is exactly why video is the thing to move onto Wi-Fi and everything else is the thing to stop worrying about.
In short
Three sentences cover it. Navigation, messaging and web browsing use almost nothing: together they sit comfortably under the daily gigabyte. Video, in all its forms, uses everything else. And automatic updates can drain a plan without you touching the phone at all.
Turn updates off outside Wi-Fi, turn video autoplay off, download your maps before you fly, and the question of volume stops arising for the rest of the trip.
If you are still deciding how long a plan to buy, the answer is driven by the number of days rather than by a data figure — the allowance resets either way, so match the plan to the trip and stop there.
One final reassurance, because the numbers above can read as alarming. The overwhelming majority of travellers never think about any of this: they land, the phone works, and they go about the trip. The settings in this guide exist to make that outcome reliable rather than lucky, and they are a one-off five minutes before departure, not something to manage day to day.
The short answer to the question everyone actually arrives with: for a normal trip to Morocco, a daily gigabyte is enough, and the settings above are what keep it that way.