If you’re currently considering switching to a cheaper cell phone plan, one thing you’ll want to do first is determine what your data usage is on your current plan. The reason you want to check your data use, even if you have an unlimited plan, is that it will help you to determine what will be more affordable depending on what your call, text, or data usage averages are for each month.
Since I am currently on an AT&T cell phone plan, I will explain below the three different methods an AT&T mobile subscriber can use to check your data use.
3 Ways to Check Data Use
- How To Check AT&T Data Usage Online
- How To Check Minutes on AT&T iPhone or Android Apps
- Check AT&T Data Usage Text Number
How To Check AT&T Data Usage Online
The first most obvious way to check your AT&T data use would be to simply log into your online account at ATT.com. Use your login credentials which usually consist of your mobile phone number and a password to access your account information. If you don’t have a login or password yet, then you’ll have to create one by registering your account first.
Once logged in, you’ll want to click on the “Billing & Usage” tab and then click on the “Usage Reports” link as shown in the picture below.
Once you are on the Billing & Usage page, there are a few different ways in which you can show your calling, text, and data use. The first is by clicking on the “Usage” tab and then selecting a particular billing period to see what amount of data was used in that billing period as shown below.
The other online option for checking data which is a bit more thorough than the previous screen is to create a usage report, which can be done by clicking on the “Reports” tab. You can then select which data type to view such as call minutes, number of texts, of gigabytes of data. Then select the start and end billing periods for which you want the report to show. I recommend going back one year in order to get a better snapshot of your average use, then click on the “Create Report” button as shown below.
How To Check Minutes on AT&T iPhone or Android Apps
Another way to check your data usage for AT&T is by using the iPhone or Android apps. You can usually download these onto your phones by searching the respective app stores for the “myAT&T” app.
Once downloaded onto your phone you can then enter the app and log in using the same credentials you would for logging into your regular online AT&T account. Once logged in, you can check your minutes, text, or data usage by clicking on the menu icon in the top right corner, then clicking on the “Usage” tab as shown below.
This will then show you a screen with the current data, text, and minutes used for current billing period like so.
Of course the main issue with checking usage via the app is that it only shows usage for the current billing cycle. So if you wanted to check minutes used for past billing cycles you’d have to click on the “Additional Usage Details” link in the app which then brings you to the full site.
Check AT&T Data Usage Text Number
The final way to check data usage for AT&T is by dialing a number and getting a text message back which shows your minutes, texts and data used for the current billing period. You can do this by dialing “*3282#” from your AT&T phone as shown in the following picture.
Once you hit send, a confirmation screen will appear which looks like this:
After a few seconds you should receive a text message from AT&T which shows your current data usage:
Again, the problem with this method is that it only shows usage for the current billing cycle and might not reflect on your average monthly use like you would find by logging into your online account.