File Upload Time Calculator
Calculate how long it takes to upload a file at a given upload speed.
Upload speeds are typically much slower than download speeds on most home internet plans, so a file that downloads in seconds can take hours to upload. This calculator estimates how long it takes to upload a video to YouTube, back up a folder to Google Drive or Dropbox, send a large attachment or push a project to cloud storage. Quick reference at a typical 20 Mbps upload: 1 GB takes about 7 minutes, 5 GB takes about 33 minutes, 10 GB takes about 67 minutes, 50 GB takes about 5.6 hours, 100 GB takes about 11 hours and 1 TB takes about 4.6 days. Enter your own file size and upload speed for a precise estimate.
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Frequently asked questions
At 20 Mbps upload: 1 GB takes about 7 minutes, 10 GB takes about 67 minutes (1.1 hours) and 100 GB takes about 11 hours. At 100 Mbps: 1 GB takes about 80 seconds, 10 GB takes 13 minutes and 100 GB takes 2.2 hours. At 1 Gbps fiber: 1 GB takes 8 seconds, 10 GB takes about 80 seconds and 100 GB takes about 13 minutes. Multiply file size in GB by 8 and divide by Mbps to get seconds.
A 10 minute 1080p video is roughly 1.5 GB - about 10 minutes at 20 Mbps upload, 40 minutes at 5 Mbps. A 30 minute 4K video at 60 GB takes about 6.7 hours at 20 Mbps or 80 minutes at 100 Mbps. YouTube also processes the video after upload, which adds extra wait time independent of your connection speed.
Most home internet plans are asymmetric - they allocate more bandwidth to downloads because that is what consumers do most. A 300 Mbps download plan might have only 10-30 Mbps upload. Cable and DSL are usually asymmetric; fiber connections (FTTH) often offer symmetric speeds where upload equals download.
At 20 Mbps upload, 1 TB (1000 GB) takes about 4.6 days of continuous transfer. At 100 Mbps it takes about 22 hours. At 1 Gbps symmetric fiber it takes about 2.2 hours. Backblaze, Backblaze B2, Google Drive and Dropbox often throttle uploads further and the first backup of a large folder may be limited to 10-30 Mbps even on a faster connection.
Use a wired ethernet connection instead of WiFi (WiFi often halves upload throughput), close other uploads and video streams, upload overnight or during off-peak hours, compress files before upload when possible, or upgrade to a symmetric fiber plan. For large one-time transfers, services like AWS Snowball or shipping a physical drive can beat the network entirely.