I have a spare phone kicking around that I'm thinking of leaving plugged into my car to provide google maps and spotify.

How much monthly data do you think would be needed?

1pmobile does 2GB for £6pcm or 4GB for £7.50pcm.

Looking for low cost for low(?) data use.

Any other recommendations for cheap sim only providers in the UK?

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@bigcalm But actually, I think how much data is included in the plan will turn out to be pretty irrelevant, and the cheapest you can find will be fine. Can't you get usage stats for these apps from your existing phone?

@mavit usage stats might well be the key to understanding before committing to a plan. At least for maps.
Spotify and such are in use outside of the car, so less accurate here.

@bigcalm But at least you get an upper bound, which might be sufficient to answer your question.

If you're not using the phone's storage for anything else, you can pre-download maps for the whole of UK.

Watch out for software updates, though, if you never bring the phone onto an unmetered network.

@mavit I use 1pmobile for data only on my iPhone. Thankfully it lets me see historic usage:

Month Data
May 2025 752.830 MB
Apr 2025 3677.418 MB
Mar 2025 3445.881 MB
Feb 2025 12980.198 MB
Jan 2025 6083.573 MB
Dec 2024 4583.816 MB
Nov 2024 2311.723 MB
Oct 2024 8327.892 MB

Seems to vary a little. But the higher values will be due to tethering in some months and not others.

I do believe that 4GB will cover maps, spotify, and pocket casts.

@bigcalm Ah. Android has per-app monthly data usage statistics, but I'm guessing from this comment that iOS does not, which is why this isn't trivial.

@mavit iOS does, but it doesn't say what the period is. Have I just started a new period or am I part way through?

Everything is a bit of a guess :)

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