Download Time by Internet Speed
| Internet Speed | Estimated Time |
|---|---|
| 25 Mbps | 5 hours 33 minutes |
| 50 Mbps | 2 hours 47 minutes |
| 100 Mbps | 1 hour 23 minutes |
| 300 Mbps | 28 minutes |
| 1,000 Mbps (Gigabit) | 8 minutes |
Visual Comparison: 50 GB Download Time by Speed
These use 80 percent of your advertised speed as the working number, which is closer to what you'll actually see than the raw plan speed. Your real time can still swing a bit depending on the platform's own server load and what else is happening on your network.
What Kind of Games Actually Land Around 50GB?
It's a wider net than you'd think. A lot of competitive multiplayer games settle here once you count in texture packs and voice lines, think Apex Legends, Overwatch 2, or Elden Ring on the smaller end of its range. It's also common for older AAA singleplayer games that have picked up a few years of patches, or mid-budget titles that don't push 4K assets as hard as the big open-world blockbusters do. If your download is a live-service shooter, there's a decent chance the base game is smaller than 50GB and the rest is seasonal content that's accumulated over time.
Will It Fit? A Quick Storage Gut-Check
Before you commit to the download, it's worth doing quick math on your drive:
- 512GB SSD (common on budget laptops and base Xbox Series S): 50GB is roughly a tenth of your whole drive. Fine for one game, gets tight fast if you're juggling several.
- 1TB SSD: comfortable room for several 50GB games alongside your OS and other software.
- 2TB or external drive: no real concern here, this size barely registers.
If you're on a smaller drive and this download is going to push you close to full, it's worth uninstalling something you haven't touched in a while before you start, rather than discovering halfway through that you're out of room.
Why It Might Take Longer Than the Table Says
A few usual suspects if your download is crawling:
- The platform itself is capping your speed. This happens a lot right after a big release or during a sale, when everyone's downloading at once.
- You're on WiFi, and it's working against you. A device far from the router loses real speed, sometimes a lot of it. Our guide to why WiFi runs slower than advertised has the actual numbers by distance.
- Someone else in the house is streaming or downloading too. Everything shares the same connection.
How to Speed It Up
- Plug in if you can. Ethernet beats WiFi for anything this size.
- Pause other downloads and streams while it runs, since they're all fighting for the same bandwidth.
- Start it and walk away. Most launchers keep going in the background or let you resume later, so there's no reason to babysit a multi-hour download.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to download a 50GB game?
About 1 hour 23 minutes on 100 Mbps, or roughly 8 minutes on gigabit. Slower connections stretch that out considerably, closer to 5 and a half hours on 25 Mbps.
Why is my 50GB download slower than the estimate?
Usually it's either the platform limiting speeds during a busy period, a weak WiFi signal, or something else on your network competing for bandwidth. Rarely is it your actual internet plan being too slow.
Is 50GB a big game these days?
It's mid-sized. Plenty of current titles run well past 100GB, especially open-world games, while 50GB is a common landing spot for competitive multiplayer titles and older AAA games.
Do I need to worry about storage space for a 50GB download?
Only really if you're on a smaller drive, like a 512GB laptop SSD. On anything 1TB or larger, it's not a meaningful chunk of your space.
Can I use my computer normally while it downloads?
Yes, though anything else that's bandwidth-heavy, like another download or 4K stream, will slow this one down since they're sharing the same connection.