Complete guide, 2026
How much bandwidth does your VPS need? Work it out in a minute.
“Bandwidth” is the most misused word in hosting. Pages mix up speed and volume, bits and bytes, and give you vague ranges. Here’s the clear version, with real numbers and a calculator.
1 TB a month is about
- 390,625page viewsof a median mobile home page (2.56 MB)
- 333hours of HD videoat up to 3 GB an hour
- 6,944hours of musicat 320 kbit/s, the top streaming quality
- 1,000downloadsof a 1 GB file
A Lite 2 includes 1 TB. A Traffic Lite includes 32 of these.
The short answer
Most VPS projects need far less traffic than they fear. A typical mobile web page is about 2.56 MB, so 1 TB a month covers roughly 390,000 page views. Video is the big exception: HD streaming uses up to 3 GB an hour.
Sites, bots and VPNs fit in the 1 to 2 TB a small Lite includes. Video, mirrors and big downloads belong on a Traffic Lite with 32 TB a month. Our free calculator below tells you which, and deploys it.
Here’s a number that surprises people.
One of our own servers sat on the public internet for about 70 hours. In that time it installed its updates, answered SSH, and fended off more than 14,000 password guesses. Total data sent: about 64 MB. That’s 0.006% of a 1 TB allowance.
Traffic isn’t used up by a server existing. It’s used up by what the server sends: pages, video, downloads, backups.
The good news? Those are all things you can estimate. A web page has a size. A video stream has a bitrate. Multiply by how often, and you have your answer.
So that’s what this guide does: real page weights, real video and audio rates, and a calculator that turns your mix into terabytes and the cheapest plan for it.
In this guide you’ll learn
- Bandwidth vs transfer vs port speed: three things people mix up
- Bits, bytes, TB and TiB, without the confusion
- How much traffic websites, video, audio and downloads really use
- A free traffic calculator that picks the cheapest plan for you
- How traffic is counted and billed, and the four rules to check
- How much storage you need, with a simple worksheet
Chapter 1
The short answer
Here’s roughly what common projects use in a month, worked out from published page sizes and bitrates.
| Project | Assumption | Traffic a month |
|---|---|---|
| Small business site | 20,000 views of a 2.56 MB page | about 51 GB |
| Busy blog | 300,000 views of a 1.77 MB inner page | about 0.53 TB |
| Personal VPN | what you browse and download through it | 50 to 500 GB, depending on you |
| Small video site | 10 viewers, 2 hours a day, HD at 3 GB an hour | about 1.8 TB |
| Download mirror | 2,000 downloads of a 2 GB file | about 4 TB |
So most sites, bots, APIs and VPNs fit easily inside the 1 to 2 TB that a small Lite includes. Video and large downloads are what change the picture, and that’s what a Traffic Lite is for.
Chapter 2
Bandwidth, transfer and port speed
Most confusion about bandwidth comes from three different ideas sharing one word.
- Port speed is how fast data can flow, measured in bits per second: 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps. Think of it as how wide the pipe is.
- Monthly transfer is how much data flows in a month, measured in bytes: 1 TB, 32 TB. Think of it as how much water goes through the pipe.
- “Bandwidth” gets used for both. When a host says “1 TB bandwidth”, it means transfer.
The two are linked by time. A pipe of a given width can only move so much in a month, even running flat out:
- 10 Mbps3.2 TB
- 100 Mbps32.4 TB
- 1 Gbps324 TB
Here’s the useful flip side: 32 TB a month, the allowance on our Traffic Lite plans, averages out to about 99 Mbps running every second of the month. Real traffic comes in peaks, so your port needs headroom above the average.
Chapter 3
Bits, bytes, TB and TiB
Three unit mix-ups cause most bad bandwidth estimates. Here’s how to avoid all of them.
1. Bits vs bytes
Network speeds are in bits (lowercase b: Mbps). File sizes and traffic allowances are in bytes (uppercase B: MB, TB). One byte is eight bits. So a 100 Mbps connection moves 12.5 MB, not 100 MB, every second.
2. TB vs TiB
A terabyte (TB) is 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A tebibyte (TiB) is 240 bytes, about 10% more. Operating systems often show binary units while hosts usually sell decimal ones.
Ours: 1 TB = 1,000 GB, decimal, like most hosts.
3. Speed vs volume
“1 Gbps unmetered” and “32 TB a month” are different promises. One limits how fast; the other limits how much. Compare like with like, using the converter in our calculator below.
Chapter 4
What actually uses traffic
Every estimate is just size multiplied by how often. Here are the sizes that matter.
Web pages
Across millions of real sites, the typical home page in 2025 weighed about 2.56 MB on mobile and 2.86 MB on desktop, and inner pages were lighter at about 1.77 MB and 1.96 MB. Your own pages may be smaller or larger: open your browser’s developer tools and check.
Video
Streaming video uses up to 1 GB an hour for SD, 3 GB for HD and 7 GB for 4K. A 1080p live stream at 30 fps runs at about 14 Mbps, which works out to about 6.3 GB an hour. If you host video, this is almost certainly your biggest number, and the reason Traffic Lites exist.
Audio
Top-quality music streams run at about 320 kbit/s, which is roughly 144 MB an hour. A small radio stream or podcast server rarely troubles a traffic allowance.
Downloads and backups
Simple multiplication: number of downloads times file size. Backups only count if they leave your server, because we only count outbound traffic.
Game servers
Game servers send small, frequent updates, so they’re usually light on traffic. Every game and mod is different, so measure yours: run your server for a day with a traffic monitor such as vnstat, then multiply by 30.
Chapter 5
Calculate your monthly traffic
Fill in what applies, leave the rest at zero. The calculator adds it all up, shows the LiteKeep plans that cost least for that much traffic, overage included, and deploys the winner.
Your outbound traffic
0.13 TB a month
About 0.40 Mbps around the clock, or 0.12 TiB
- Website: 128 GB
Your cheapest LiteKeep plans for this traffic
- Lite 21 TB included$4.00/month
- Lite 62 TB included$8.00/month
- Traffic Lite 232 TB included$8.00/month
Lite 2 fits this traffic best. Billed by the hour, never more than the monthly price, in any of 15 countries.
Deploy Lite 2Allowances pool across all your servers. Only outbound traffic counts, so uploads to your server are free. Extra is $2 per TB. See every plan.
= 32.4 TB in a 30-day month
Try setting video to a few hundred hours of HD. Watch a small plan’s overage climb, and a Traffic Lite become the cheaper option.
Chapter 6
How traffic is counted and billed
Two plans can both say “2 TB” and bill you very differently. These four rules decide what you really pay, and here’s how LiteKeep handles each.
1. Which direction counts?
Some hosts count both directions, which uses your allowance up about twice as fast for VPNs and backups. We only count outbound traffic. Uploads to your server are free.
2. Per server or pooled?
Per-server allowances waste what quiet servers don’t use. Ours pool: every plan’s allowance adds to one pool across all your servers, so a busy server uses what the quiet ones leave.
3. What happens past the allowance?
Either you pay per TB, or your speed gets cut. On LiteKeep, anything past your pool is a flat $2 per TB.
4. What period?
The calendar month. It resets on the 1st, and hourly servers add their allowance for the hours they exist.
| Rule | LiteKeep |
|---|---|
| Direction | Outbound only. Uploads to your server are free. |
| Units | 1 TB = 1,000 GB (decimal) |
| Period | Calendar month, resets on the 1st |
| Pooling | Every plan’s allowance adds to one pool across all your servers |
| Hourly servers | Add their allowance for the hours they exist |
| Past the pool | $2 per TB |
Three things people get wrong
- “Unmetered” isn’t unlimited. It usually means no monthly cap but a fixed port speed, often with a fair-use policy. The speed is the limit.
- An idle server doesn’t burn traffic. Ours sent about 64 MB in 70 hours, attacks and updates included. Traffic follows what you serve.
- A bigger allowance doesn’t make a site faster. Distance to your users and page weight do, which is why we run the same plans in 15 countries.
Chapter 7
How to use less traffic
Before you buy a bigger plan, see if you can send less. These work for almost every site.
- Compress imagesHow to check: Modern formats like WebP and AVIF are often much smaller than JPEG and PNG. Check your largest images first.
- Turn on text compressionHow to check: Make sure your web server sends HTML, CSS and JavaScript compressed (gzip or Brotli). Check the response headers in your browser.
- Set long cache times for static filesHow to check: Returning visitors then reuse files instead of downloading them again.
- Move heavy files to a Traffic LiteHow to check: Put video, downloads and big images on a Traffic Lite with 32 TB a month, and keep your app where it already runs.
- Watch your traffic weeklyHow to check: A monitor like vnstat shows your trend long before you reach a limit.
Chapter 8
How much storage you need
Disk space is easier to estimate than traffic. People still get it wrong, usually by forgetting logs, backups and growth.
| Item | How to estimate it |
|---|---|
| Operating system | About 25 GB is a comfortable minimum for Ubuntu |
| Your software | A few GB for most apps; our size picker adds it up |
| Your data | Files, uploads, databases, mail: measure what you have today |
| Logs and updates | Leave a few GB; rotate logs so they don’t grow forever |
| Local backups | If you keep copies on the same disk, multiply your data by the number of copies |
| Growth | Room for a year of growth, based on how fast your data grows now |
Not sure how much RAM and disk your software needs? Our VPS size picker adds it up and names the plan.
Quick answers
Is 1 TB of bandwidth enough? For most websites, bots, APIs and personal VPNs, yes. For video hosting or large downloads, go for a Traffic Lite with 32 TB.
What is 32 TB of bandwidth? About 99 Mbps flowing every second of a 30-day month, or roughly 10,700 hours of HD video.
Does incoming traffic count? Not at LiteKeep. Only outbound traffic counts.
Now it’s your move
Bandwidth stops being scary the moment you put numbers on it.
Measure your page weight. Count your video hours. Use the calculator. Then deploy the plan whose allowance fits, with room for a busy month.
Moving a lot of data? A Traffic Lite includes 32 TB a month, every allowance pools across your servers, and hourly billing means you can start today and stop any time.