Whether you’re binge-watching The Bachelor, The Bear or you’re that one person watching Burn Notice again, Hulu has a ton of shows you want to stream — but how much data does Hulu use? Streaming can use tons of data, but luckily there are ways to make it use less so you can watch all 7 seasons of Burn Notice without getting burned.
Does Hulu use a lot of data?
Whether or not Hulu uses tons of data depends on what your video quality is set to. If you set it to HD video quality, which is Hulu’s recommended setting for most of its users, you’ll use about 1.3GB of data per hour of viewing. It’s about how much Netflix and YouTube would use at the same video quality. If you go down in image quality to standard definition, you could use only .65GB an hour. And if you want to go all the way to 4K, you’ll be using a whopping 7GB an hour — almost 7 times as much data as regular old HD streaming.
How much data does Hulu + Live TV use?
Hulu offers Live TV, which is a popular add-on for people to watch live sports or The Bachelor to avoid spoilers. However, it can use quite a bit of data. If you use Live TV, expect to use about 3.5GB of data every hour, almost triple the amount needed to watch a non-live video on Hulu.
How to check your Hulu data usage
Been streaming a lot on Hulu recently? Here’s how to check how much data you’ve used, depending on your device.
Check Hulu data use on iPhone
- Go to Settings
- Tap Cellular
- Scroll down to see Hulu data usage
Check Hulu data use on Android phones
- Go to Settings
- Tap Network & Internet
- Select Mobile network
- Scroll down to see Hulu data usage
How to reduce your Hulu data usage
Found out from the previous section you’re using a little too much data on Hulu? It happens. Here’s how to reduce your Hulu data usage.
- Watch on Wi-Fi. If you’re on Wi-Fi, you can binge all day without worrying about using a drop of data.
- Download videos to watch offline. No Wi-Fi available or know it’ll be an issue at some point in the future? If you’re subscribed to the ad-free version of Hulu, you can download videos ahead of time when you do have Wi-Fi access. When you download, you can also determine the video quality of your downloads to use up less space. Here’s how:
- Open Hulu
- Tap Account at the bottom of your screen
- Select Settings
- Select Downloads
- Tap Video Quality
- Choose Standard for smaller files (or High if you want to watch with the best quality)
- Use Hulu’s Data Saver setting. Hulu’s Data Saver does exactly what it says — it saves you data when playing videos. Here’s how to enable it:
- Open Hulu
- Select Account
- Select Settings
- Tap Cellular Data Usage
- Select Data Saver
- Adjust your playback settings. That is, change the video quality of the videos you’re watching. Here’s how:
- Open Hulu
- Next time you’re playing a video, tap the Settings button in the corner
- Select your preferred video quality
Look at you, you Hulu expert
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