How much data do you really need on a Belgian 5G plan?

Between 15 and 20 GB a month covers the large majority of Belgian subscribers. BIPT, the Belgian telecom regulator, published an average national consumption of 11.9 GB on 14 July 2026, while the market routinely sells 50 to 70 GB tiers. Here is the usage-by-usage maths, and the real price per gigabyte by brand.

How much data does a Belgian subscriber actually use?

11.9 GB a month. The figure comes from the regulator, not from an operator.

BIPT has tracked this average for ten years and the curve is steep: consumption has more than tripled in five years, rising from 3.9 to 11.9 GB a month. The regulator's statistics give the year-by-year detail: 0.3 GB in 2015, 3 GB in 2019, 5.2 GB in 2021, 7.8 GB in 2023, 10.1 GB in 2024.

Two remarks about that average, because an average always hides something. It lumps together a subscriber using 2 GB and one using 60. And it stays low by European standards: on 2024 data, Spain sat at 13 GB, the United Kingdom at 15.4 GB and France at 16 GB according to the Arcep market observatory. Belgians watch their video at home, on Wi-Fi.

How long does 1 GB of data last?

Video decides everything, the rest barely counts.

The orders of magnitude below come from documentation published by the platforms and by operators, including Proximus. They vary by app and by setting, but the gap between the lines does not move.

One gigabyte is twenty minutes of HD drama, or twelve hours of music. Watching one hour of high-definition video a day over the mobile network would need 90 GB a month, above every common Belgian tier. Dropping playback quality to 480p divides that same hour by twelve.

Is 50 GB useful, or money thrown away?

Money thrown away, in most cases. The market pushes that way regardless: last year close to eight in ten Belgian post-paid subscribers had more than 10 GB included, against six in ten two years earlier. Operators regularly add volume rather than cut prices, and that volume does not get spent.

The jump between tiers is the real trap in this mechanism. At Proximus you go from 10 to 60 GB; at Orange, from 12 to 70 GB; at BASE, from 15 to 50 GB. There is almost no intermediate tier where the country's real consumption actually sits, which forces a choice between an allowance that is too small and one that is four times too large.

What does a gigabyte cost, brand by brand?

Here is the calculation nobody publishes: the price of an included gigabyte, with the host network next to it, surveyed on 21 September 2026, at the thirteenth-month price. An MVNO rents the towers of one of the four Belgian networks, so coverage follows the network while the price follows the label.

Three lines in this table run on the same towers. hey! mobile S gives 15 GB for 5 €, Orange Mobile Small gives 12 for 15 €, Orange Mobile Medium gives 70 for 23 €. On the Orange network, an average subscriber who picks the 70 GB tier pays 18 € more a month than at hey!, or 216 € a year, and leaves 58 GB on the table every month.

The other lesson is less intuitive. Proximus Mobile Easy, at 19.99 € for 10 GB, puts its entry-level plan below the national average: a subscriber who uses what the average Belgian uses will exceed the allowance almost every month, with the bill that comes with it.

The cheapest and the most expensive gigabyte on the Belgian market sit on different towers. But the most brutal gap plays out on one single network.

What happens when the allowance runs out?

It depends entirely on the brand, and the gap runs into hundreds of euros.

Put the two extremes side by side. A gigabyte costs roughly 120 € in overage at Proximus and 0.33 € included at hey!, a ratio of 1 to 360 for the same quantity of data. A four-figure overage bill was documented again in the Belgian press in May 2026. Data blocking takes two minutes to set up and costs nothing.

Six checks before picking a tier

None takes more than five minutes, and they all happen before signing.

• Read your consumption over the last three months in the phone settings or the operator app. Three months, not one, so that holidays and quiet months balance out.
• Check whether your video runs on Wi-Fi or on the mobile network. It is the single variable that genuinely shifts the tier you need.
• Count the devices that hang off your tethering. A laptop on a hotspot consumes without warning, especially during an update.
• Verify whether unused volume rolls over. The rule lives in the tariff conditions, not on the homepage.
• Find the out-of-bundle rate in the plan sheet, along with the option to block data. Two brands on the same network do not treat overage the same way.
• Compare prices at equal volume on your host network, not across networks. Coverage depends on the network, price depends on the label.

How much data for a teenager, a freelancer, a retiree?

Three profiles, three tiers, and only one that justifies the big allowances.

Teenagers are the hungriest line in the household: continuous short-form video, music, tethering to a console or a laptop. So-called youth plans often stop at 5 or 10 GB, which guarantees an overage. A 20 to 30 GB tier matches reality better.

A freelancer working on the move depends on video calls, at 2.5 to 4 GB an hour, and that is the one common profile where 50 GB holds up without argument. A retiree who calls, checks messages and looks at photos usually stays under 5 GB, and still pays for a plan built for usage they do not have.

Should you build in spare capacity?

A little, not a lot. Three gigabytes above your measured average absorb a holiday month or a fixed-line outage. Beyond that, the headroom turns into a fixed cost.

And the real lever is not the tier. On a single network, the gap between two labels beats the gap between two tiers: going from 15 to 70 GB at Orange costs 8 € a month, going from Orange to hey! while keeping 15 GB saves 10 €. So the first move is still to pick the network by coverage at your address, then the cheapest label sitting on it.

We measure no consumption in the field: this page cross-checks the regulator's public statistics, operator price lists and the orders of magnitude published by the platforms, surveyed on 21 September 2026. The market sorted on the thirteenth-month price sits in our 5G plan ranking, host network shown beside every line, and reorders in the comparison tool. We have covered elsewhere why 5G drains an allowance faster than 4G, what unlimited data is really worth in Belgium and the full 24-month cost of a plan.

Sources: BIPT, press release on mobile data consumption more than tripling in five years, published 14 July 2026, and electronic communications market statistics, consulted 21 September 2026; Arcep, observatory of electronic communications markets in France, final 2024 results; L'Avenir, investigation into Belgian subscribers paying for unused gigabytes, 1 April 2026, and article on a 2,000 € Proximus overage bill, 27 May 2026; Proximus, support page on exceeding your internet allowance and blog article on app data usage; Selectra, Belgian out-of-bundle comparison, August 2026; public price lists from hey! Telecom, Orange, Proximus, BASE and DIGI Belgium, surveyed 21 September 2026. No link on this page is monetised.