SiteHostingFinder

// calculator · updated for 2026

How much disk space and bandwidth does your website need? (Calculator)

By Fathi Arfaoui · Updated · 6 min read · Disclosure

Most small sites need far less than hosts sell. My whole HostGator account served 7,548 visits in 12 months and uses 5.4GB of its 50GB. Enter your numbers below to see what yours needs.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Bandwidth ≈ visitors × pages per visit × page weight. 10,000 visits × 2 pages × 2MB ≈ 40GB a month.
  • Disk space for a typical WordPress blog with 100 posts is about 1-2GB with compressed images; images are most of it.
  • "Unlimited" plans still have limits in the terms, usually files (inodes) and CPU, not gigabytes.
  • A CDN like Cloudflare cuts the bandwidth your host serves, often by half or more.

Calculator

DISK SPACE & BANDWIDTH CALCULATOR

What bandwidth means, and how to estimate it

Bandwidth (or data transfer) is how much data your server sends to visitors in a month. Every page view downloads the page's HTML, images, CSS and JavaScript. A modern page weighs 1.5-3MB; a lean one under 1MB.

Multiply it out: visitors × pages per visit × page weight, then add about 50% for search engine crawlers, bots and traffic spikes. The calculator above does exactly that.

What uses disk space

  • WordPress itself: about 70MB, plus themes and plugins (100-500MB on most sites).
  • Images and media: usually 80-90% of a site's size. 500 photos at 300KB each is 150MB; uncompressed phone photos can be 10× that.
  • The database: posts, comments, settings; 50-500MB for most blogs, more for stores.
  • Backups and logs stored on the account: easy to forget. I found a 19MB error log on one of my own HostGator sites.
  • Email, if your mailboxes live on the same account.

Does "unlimited" mean unlimited?

No. HostGator's Terms of Service, for example, cap shared accounts at 200,000 files (inodes), 5,000 database tables and 10GB of databases, and drop off-site file backups above 20GB. Unlimited bandwidth plans are limited by CPU and fair-use rules instead. For most small sites none of this matters: the sizes in our Hosting Matcher are already more than they'll use.

HostGator Hosting page: Business plan using 5.42 of 50 GB and 6 of 50 websites, Phoenix data center
My HostGator Business plan: 5.42 of 50GB used across six sites.
Webalizer usage statistics: 12 months of visits and traffic for the account
Twelve months of traffic on the same account: 7,548 visits in total.

How to need less of both

  1. Compress images (WebP, max 1600px wide). That alone often halves page weight.
  2. Put the site behind a free CDN such as Cloudflare.
  3. Delete unused plugins, themes and old backups from the server.
  4. For sites that rarely change, consider static hosting, where bandwidth is often free.

FAQ

How much bandwidth do I need for 10,000 visitors a month?

With 2 pages per visit and 2MB pages, about 40GB, or roughly 60GB with crawler and spike headroom. Most entry hosting plans cover that.

How much disk space does a WordPress site need?

A small blog with 100 posts and compressed images usually needs 1-2GB. A store or a photo-heavy site can need 10GB or more.

Is 10GB of storage enough?

For one small WordPress site, usually yes. For several sites, a store, or many uncompressed images, look at 20-50GB plans.

Keep reading

Free toolsManaged WordPress cost calculatorEnter your sites, visits and storage to see the cheapest plan at Pressable, Kinsta and WordPress.com Business,…Hosting explainedStatic web hosting explainedStatic hosting serves ready-made HTML files: fast, secure and often free. How it works, its limits, and the fr…reviewHostGator review: 13 years as a customertoolHosting Matcher

WRITTEN BY

Fathi Arfaoui

Fathi Arfaoui has helped people choose web hosting, start blogs and build WordPress sites since 2013. He founded SiteHostingFinder to replace opinion-based hosting reviews with real prices and public data. He has been a HostGator customer since 2013 and has hosted 40-50 WordPress sites on Pressable since 2017.