---
title: Estimate Live Updates Usage
description: Estimate your Capawesome Cloud Live Update usage — predict monthly active users (MAU) and data transfer against your plan limits.
---

# Estimate Usage

Live Updates are billed by **monthly active users (MAU)** and **data transfer**. Storage is **unlimited** with no usage-based charges ([fair use](/legal/terms-of-service/){:target="_blank"} applies). This guide helps you estimate both billed metrics so you can pick the right plan and avoid surprises. For the hard limits, see [Limits & quotas](limits.md).

## Estimate monthly active users

A device counts as **one MAU** the first time it checks for an update in a given month, regardless of how many times it checks afterward or how many updates it downloads.

```
Expected MAU ≈ number of devices that open your app at least once per month
```

So your MAU is essentially your active install base — update frequency does **not** increase it. A device that opens your app daily counts the same as one that opens it once.

## Estimate data transfer

Data transfer is the bandwidth used to **deliver** bundles to devices. Only downloads count toward your allowance — **uploading** bundles to Capawesome Cloud is free and does not use data transfer.

```
Data transfer ≈ MAU × updates downloaded per device per month × bundle size
```

For example, an app with **1,000 MAU** that publishes **4 updates per month** at **~10 MB** each:

```
1,000 MAU × 4 updates × 10 MB = 40 GB per month
```

This is just an example — your actual data transfer varies with the size of your updates and how many of them each device downloads.

## Reduce your usage

- [Reduce update size](bundle-size.md) — smaller bundles (and delta updates that ship only the changed files) mean less data transfer per delivery.
- Publish deliberately — every new bundle a device downloads adds to data transfer, so avoid unnecessary republishes.