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Silarius Academy / Internet and network

Work out how much data your cameras use

Estimate how many gigabytes your cameras send each hour, day and month.

5 min Intermediate

By the end you will be able to guess how much data your cameras use. This helps if your internet plan has a data limit.

What you need

  • Each camera's average bitrate (how much data it sends each second)
  • The number of cameras
  • A calculator

Step by step

  1. Pick the average bitrate

    Find the bitrate each camera is set to. If you are not sure, a 1080p camera at 12 frames per second is about 750 Kbps.

  2. Add up all cameras

    Multiply the bitrate by the number of cameras. For 7 cameras at 750 Kbps, that is 5,250 Kbps.

  3. Turn it into kilobytes

    Divide by 8. 5,250 ÷ 8 = about 656 kilobytes (KB) every second.

  4. Turn it into gigabytes

    Divide by 1,024 to get megabytes (MB). Divide by 1,024 again to get gigabytes (GB). That is about 0.00063 GB every second.

  5. Work out per hour and per day

    Multiply by 3,600 for one hour. That is about 2.25 GB an hour. Multiply by 24 for one day. That is about 54 GB a day.

  6. Work out per month

    Multiply the daily number by the number of days. 54 GB × 30 days = about 1,620 GB a month for these 7 cameras.

Quick rule of thumb

One camera sending 750 Kbps all day uses about 7.7 GB a day. Multiply that by your number of cameras and days.

Showing a camera on a website uses data too

You can show a live camera on a web page. Every person who watches it pulls video through your account.

Example: one camera at 750 Kbps uses about 0.005 GB for each minute someone watches. If 100 people each watch for one minute, that is about 0.53 GB. If people keep watching for a full hour, it is about 31.8 GB.

So keep an eye on how much a public camera gets watched. For plan or billing questions, contact Silarius: request a quote or email us.

Good to know

  • Real use changes with motion in the scene. Busy scenes use more.
  • Lower the frame rate to cut data use. See Use less internet.

Learn next

Still stuck? We'll do it with you, free.

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