The average American spends $600 a year on cellular data they don’t use, the report shows

• Americans spend $50 a month on overage cell phone plans, a new report has found
• Some 83 percent of users pay for an unlimited data plan – yet 72 percent never use more than 15GB
• Separate data shows that mobile phone bills rose by nearly 5 percent each year between 2013 and 2020

Americans are spending about $50 a month — or $600 a year — on their cellphone bills paying for data they don’t use, a new report has found.

Some 83 percent of consumers are paying for an unlimited data plan, but most are using less than 15 gigabytes (GB) per month, according to a study by comparison website WhistleOut.

The survey of 1,000 adults found that consumers spend an average of $160 per month to be on a phone plan with one of the major carriers — including T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T.

Consumers rely on data to get online when they’re not using a WiFi network, but many don’t realize they’re overspending on an unnecessary contract.

Carriers offer unlimited plans, according to the findings, because they know customers won’t control their data usage — and one in five people don’t know how to control how much data they get each month.

Meanwhile, customers, who are increasingly dependent on their mobile phones, are filling up on unlimited plans for fear of running out of data.

Unlimited plans aren’t really ‘unlimited’ but offer data up to a certain limit – which is usually around 25GB.

WhistleOut found that 20 percent of people use under 5 GB per month, 30 percent use 5 to 10 GB, and 22 percent use 10 to 15 GB.

This meant that the vast majority – around 72 percent – use under 15 GB per month, while the remaining 28 percent reported using more than 15 GB.

And of those with an unlimited plan, the study found, 46 percent use under 10GB.

According to the study, one of the main reasons for data loss is the falling price of mobile data per gigabyte.

Since 2018, prices have fallen by 40 percent — from $4.64 to $2.75. But despite falling prices per gigabyte, operator costs per plan are rising.

The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that cell phone plans grew by about 4.7 percent year over year between 2013 and 2020.

Using the trend line from this data, WhistleOut estimates that the current average phone plan costs about $114 per month, or $1,371 per year.

Only 13 percent of Americans use data at home since most use WiFi — which also significantly reduces the amount of mobile data they need.

It comes after separate data showed households were spending $25.34 a month on unused subscription services.

The average U.S. household has 4.4 paid subscriptions worth $52.97 a month, according to a survey of 1,106 people by credit-building firm Self-Financial.

The data revealed that Disney+ was the most unused video streaming subscription – with 29.3 per cent of people paying for it claiming they hadn’t used it in the past 30 days. Disney+ membership costs start at $7.99.

It was followed by Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, which each saw 22.3 and 22.2 percent of users respectively saying they hadn’t watched them in the past month.