The majority of smartphone users are on a data tariff far too large for their needs, according to a report by mobile price comparison site billmonitor.com. While 88 per cent of smartphone users pay for 500MB or more of monthly data usage, 49 per cent use just 100MB or less, the report found.

Roughly equal amounts of smartphone users consume between 100 and 250MB of data each month (24 per cent), and over 250MB (27 per cent) according to the report, based on anonymised analysis of over 215,000 mobile phone bills from UK customers who used the companys bill analysis service.

“Virtually all smartphone users have one thing in common: they’re all paying more for mobile data than they should,” says Stelios Koundouros, founder of billmonitor.com. “It is notoriously difficult for people to estimate their real data usage, and smartphone users who don’t know how much data they are using cannot make an informed decision on which tariff is right for them. We urge people to take a good look at their consumption and make sure that they are not paying over the odds for their data.”

Despite fear of incurring charges for exceeding their data limies, the company says, only 8 per cent of smartphone users recently incurred data charges.