Bandwidth Calculator
Data Unit Converter
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Download/Upload Time Calculator
Estimate how long a file takes to transfer at a given connection speed.
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Website Bandwidth Calculator
Estimate the bandwidth and monthly data a website needs from its traffic. The redundancy factor adds headroom for traffic peaks, typically 1.5 to 3.
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Hosting Bandwidth Converter
Hosting plans quote bandwidth in two different ways. Shared and virtual hosting usually sell a monthly data allowance, such as 1,000 GB of transfer per month, while dedicated servers and colocation are often sold by connection speed, such as a 100 Mbit/s port, sometimes billed on the 95th percentile of measured usage. This converter translates between the two, assuming traffic is spread evenly across a month of 365 ÷ 12 days.
Real traffic is never even: most sites see daily peaks several times their average and occasional spikes from promotions or links, so a connection should be sized well above the average figure.
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This bandwidth calculator page has four tools: a data unit converter, a download and upload time estimate, a website bandwidth estimate from page views, and a converter between monthly data usage and connection speed.
In networking, bandwidth is the maximum rate at which data can move across a connection, measured in bits per second. Internet plans are advertised in megabits or gigabits per second (Mbit/s or Mbps, Gbit/s), while file sizes are measured in bytes. A byte is eight bits, so a 100 Mbit/s connection moves at most 12.5 megabytes per second. Mixing up the lowercase b of bits and the uppercase B of bytes is the most common reason a download seems eight times slower than expected.
Data sizes add another wrinkle. Network speeds and storage makers use decimal prefixes, where a kilobyte is 1,000 bytes and a gigabyte is a billion bytes. Operating systems often count in binary multiples of 1,024 instead; the IEC names for these are kibibyte (KiB), mebibyte (MiB) and gibibyte (GiB). A 500 GB drive therefore shows up as about 465 GiB. The calculators on this page use decimal units throughout.
Bandwidth is not the only factor in how fast things feel. Latency, the delay for a signal to make a round trip, matters more for gaming and video calls, and throughput, the rate actually achieved, is usually below the advertised bandwidth because of protocol overhead, Wi-Fi conditions, congestion and the speed of the server at the other end.
Common Internet Connection Bandwidth
Typical download and upload speeds of common fixed connections. Actual speeds depend on the plan, distance from the exchange or node, and network load. The FCC's benchmark for US broadband has been 100 Mbit/s down and 20 Mbit/s up since 2024.
| Connection | Typical download | Typical upload |
|---|---|---|
| Dial-up modem | 56 kbit/s | 33.6–48 kbit/s |
| ADSL2+ | Up to 24 Mbit/s | Up to 1–3 Mbit/s |
| VDSL2 | 25–100 Mbit/s | 5–40 Mbit/s |
| Cable (DOCSIS 3.1) | 100 Mbit/s – 1+ Gbit/s | 10–50 Mbit/s (higher on newer plans) |
| Fiber to the home | 300 Mbit/s – 10 Gbit/s | Often symmetric |
| Geostationary satellite | 25–100 Mbit/s | 3–5 Mbit/s |
| Low-earth-orbit satellite | 50–250 Mbit/s | 10–30 Mbit/s |
| Fixed wireless | 25–300 Mbit/s | 5–50 Mbit/s |
Mobile Broadband Connection Bandwidth
Mobile speeds vary even more, depending on signal strength, how many people share the cell, and the frequency bands in use. The figures below are typical real-world ranges, well under the theoretical peaks in the standards.
Each generation of mobile technology has multiplied available speeds roughly tenfold. 5G networks using mid-band spectrum regularly deliver a few hundred megabits per second, and millimeter-wave 5G can exceed a gigabit over short distances, while low-band 5G behaves more like fast 4G but covers much larger areas.
| Generation | Technology | Typical download | Theoretical peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2G | GPRS / EDGE | 40–200 kbit/s | 384 kbit/s |
| 3G | UMTS / HSPA+ | 1–20 Mbit/s | 42 Mbit/s |
| 4G | LTE / LTE-Advanced | 20–100 Mbit/s | 1 Gbit/s and above |
| 5G | NR (low and mid band) | 100–900 Mbit/s | Several Gbit/s |
| 5G | NR (millimeter wave) | 1–3 Gbit/s | 20 Gbit/s |
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to download 1 GB at 100 Mbps?
About 80 seconds: 1 GB is 8,000 megabits, and 8,000 ÷ 100 = 80 s, plus some protocol overhead.
What is the difference between Mbps and MBps?
Mbps is megabits per second; MBps is megabytes per second. Divide Mbps by 8 to get MBps.
How much bandwidth does a website need?
Multiply page views per second by the average page size, then by a redundancy factor of about 2 for peaks. 5,000 views a day of 500 KB pages needs about 0.46 Mbit/s with a factor of 2.
How many GB is 1 Mbit/s for a month?
Sustained all month, 1 Mbit/s transfers about 328.5 GB (1,000,000 bits × 2,628,000 seconds ÷ 8).
What is the formula for bandwidth?
Bandwidth needed = data size in bits ÷ transfer time in seconds, and transfer time = data size ÷ bandwidth. Multiply bytes by 8 to get bits: moving a 500 MB file in one minute needs 4,000 megabits ÷ 60 s ≈ 66.7 Mbit/s. Allow extra for protocol overhead, since real throughput is usually below the advertised rate.
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