Questions and answers

Two things. It shows live upload and download throughput in the Android status bar, and it analyses how much data has been used — against your monthly quota, day by day, and app by app. It also includes a list of open network connections, a ping watch list and a Wi‑Fi scanner.

No. It measures and reports; it does not compress traffic, block requests or change any other app’s behaviour. What it can do is show you which app and which day cost you the most, so that you can change a setting in that app or on your plan. The saving, if there is one, comes from the decision you make afterwards.

No. It has no power to restrict another app’s traffic — that control lives in Android’s own settings, where most versions let you disable background data per app. Data Monitor tells you which app to go and change.

Neither. It does not route your traffic anywhere, does not decrypt anything and does not sit between your apps and the network. It reads statistics Android already keeps.

It is free to install and free to use, and it is funded by advertising — the Google Play listing carries a Contains ads badge. The listing also carries an In-app purchases badge: some extras are a paid unlock. There is no subscription and no account.

The developer describes the premium part as widgets and selected modules. Google Play prices in-app items in this app at $2.99–$4.49 each. The meter and the usage analysis are not behind the paywall. The purchase screen inside the app is the authoritative description of what a given item unlocks, and shows prices in your own currency.

Purchases, refunds and purchase history are handled by Google Play. This website never takes a payment.

Because Android ties Wi‑Fi scanning to location permission. Any app that lists nearby wireless networks or reads details of the network you are attached to has to hold it, regardless of what the app is for. That is what the Wi‑Fi scanner uses it for.

Separately, the Play data safety declaration lists approximate location among the data that may be shared with third parties for advertising — a different question, answered next.

In its Google Play data safety declaration the developer states that the app collects no data itself, and that data may be shared with third parties in six categories: approximate location, other personal info, device or other IDs, app interactions and installed apps, purchase history, and crash logs. The first five are declared as shared for advertising or marketing, crash logs for analytics. The declaration also states that data is encrypted in transit and that deletion can be requested.

Put plainly: the app is not building its own profile of you, but the advertising that funds it behaves the way advertising does. The authoritative and current version of this declaration is the one on the Play listing itself, and the app has its own privacy policy separate from this website’s.

On the device. The app reads Android’s network statistics and keeps its own settings locally; there is no cloud account behind it, and uninstalling removes the app’s local settings.

No. There is no registration, no sign-in and no profile.

No, and no app running on the phone can promise that. The app reports what Android’s own network statistics recorded. Your carrier counts independently at its end, on its own billing cycle, with its own rounding, and it may count protocol overhead differently or not charge for some traffic at all.

Expect the two to be close, not identical. Use the app to find which day and which app; use the carrier’s figure for what you owe. If the gap is large rather than small, the usual cause is a billing cycle start day set to the wrong date — the app is then comparing a different month to the one on the bill.

Most often the permissions it needs to attribute traffic were declined, or granted after the fact, in which case there is nothing recorded for the earlier period. Android also ages out old statistics on its own schedule. Check the permissions, then give it a day of normal use.

A live meter has to stay awake to count, so it is not free, though in ordinary use the cost is small next to the screen and the transfer itself. If it bothers you, switch the status-bar meter off — the daily and per-app history keep working, because they are read from statistics Android maintains anyway.

Usually the phone’s battery optimisation stopping background apps — common on several manufacturer skins. Allow the app to run in the background in Android’s battery settings and exclude it from aggressive power saving. Raising the notification priority in the app helps keep the icon visible, but nothing in the app can survive the system killing it.

Android 6.0 and later. Some of the analysis features depend on statistics that earlier releases do not expose. Google Play will tell you whether your specific device is compatible before you install.

No. Data Monitor is an Android application only. iOS does not give third-party apps the system-wide traffic statistics this kind of tool is built on, so there is no equivalent to publish. If you find an app of this name on another platform, it did not come from the publisher.

Write to the developer contact address published on the Play listing, and include the phone model, the Android version and the app version — the answer usually depends on all three. The Google Play listing also carries the developer contact details that Google verified.

KF Software House, the publisher of the app. This site exists to document the app in more depth than a store listing allows; it does not sell anything, does not host the app and takes no payment. Installing is done on Google Play. More on the About page.