IoT Device Data Volume Calculator

Work out iot device data volume instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About IoT Device Data Volume Calculator

IoT traffic is dominated by per-message overhead rather than payload: a 120-byte reading wrapped in MQTT over TLS over TCP over IP can easily carry 90 bytes of headers, so 43 percent of the bill is envelope. Batching several readings into one message, or using CoAP over UDP, is what actually reduces cellular data cost at fleet scale.

Formula

IoT volume

bytes per message = payload + overhead; messages per second = devices x per-hour rate / 3600; monthly = rate x bytes x 86400 x 30.44

Worked example

With the default values below, IoT Device Data Volume Calculator returns Monthly data volume of 34.29 GiB. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Devicesminimum 1: 20,000
Messages per device per hourminimum 0.001: 12
Payload per messageminimum 1 bytes: 120 bytes
Protocol overhead per messageminimum 0 bytes: 90 bytes

Results

Monthly data volume: 34.29 GiB
Message rate: 66.7 msg/s
Daily data volume: 1.13 GiB
Share of bytes that are protocol overhead: 42.9%

Step by step

1Values used
2IoT volume
3Monthly data volume= 36,820,224,000
4Message rate= 66.7 msg/s
5Daily data volume= 1,209,600,000
6Share of bytes that are protocol overhead= 42.9

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or compounding frequency into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 1 decimal place, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is overhead reduced?

Batch readings into fewer, larger messages, use a binary encoding such as CBOR or Protobuf instead of JSON, and keep TLS sessions alive rather than renegotiating.

Does NB-IoT change the arithmetic?

Yes. It is designed for small infrequent messages with much lower protocol overhead and power draw, at the cost of very low throughput and higher latency.