How much data does Stan use?

Stan has grown to become one of the best streaming services in Australia, holding its own against global household names like Netflix, Disney Plus and Prime Video. With a wealth of TV and movie content on offer (not to mention Stan Sport), there is variance in data usage depending on some key factors.

The amount of data Stan uses is determined by the playback settings, your internet connection and your Stan subscription. Stan offers subscriptions for Basic, Standard and Premium, which have up to SD, HD and 4K playback, respectively.

Stan defaults to its ‘Auto’ setting for playback. So if you have a slow or inconsistent internet connection, Stan may default to a lower-quality playback setting to ensure a smooth experience without buffering. As for playback settings, outside of automatic, there are options for low, medium, high and 4K quality (dependent on your Stan subscription tier).

With the theory out of the way, Stan uses anywhere from 570MB per hour on its lowest quality setting up to 7GB per hour for 4K playback. The table below shows Stan’s hourly data usage next to Netflix, Disney Plus and Prime Video. Note that these results are indicative of a single stream, so multiply accordingly for multiple Stan streams on the same internet connection.

Stan internet speeds vary based on your Stan subscription, the device you’re streaming on (e.g. smartphone vs 4K TV) and the playback quality setting. You can get away with internet as slow as 1.27Mbps for the low setting but 4K requires around 15.55Mbps.

The table below showcases internet speed requirements for Stan compared to Netflix, Disney Plus and Prime Video (based on the download estimates above). Again, note that these speeds are indicative of a single stream, so multiply by two, three or four if you want to know the bandwidth requirements to stream Stan (or other services) to different devices on the same internet connection.

Pretty much every NBN plan these days has unlimited data (unless you’re a Sky Muster satellite NBN customer), so you don’t have to worry about data limits. We recommend at least an NBN 25 plan to comfortably stream Stan to a single device, but NBN 50 plans are more versatile. Below is a daily updating list of popular NBN 50 plans from our comparison engine.

If you want to watch Stan movies and TV shows on the go, we’d advise starting comparisons with a SIM Only mobile plan with at least 30GB of data. Here are some popular SIM Only plans from our database.

Alternatively, for more control over how much you’re spending, consider a Prepaid plan with at least 30GB of data. Here’s a look at some popular Prepaid plans from our comparison engine.