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I'd like to buy a mobile broadband service, but there's a limit in gigabyte per month I can download.

Before i buy, it would be great to know what i currently consume, bandwidth wise. Is this statisti available anywhere on a vanilla OS X system? Should I get an additional application?

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Short of tethering your Mac to an iPhone or iOS device that measures this more easily, you might ask the carrier if you could borrow equipment and pay for a metered amount and see how long it takes to burn that first allocation. Then you could buy with confidence. – bmike♦ Nov 22 '12 at 20:19
A search for bandwidth on the App Store shows as the the top result a free app called Bandwidth+ that sounds like it'll do about what you want. – zpletan Nov 22 '12 at 23:15

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OSXDaily had an article on this very topic. It will answer your question.

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please summarize the contents of your link so your answer remains valid even if the link expires. – Gerry Nov 23 '12 at 4:38
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Activity Monitor will show your network usage for the current session, but this gets reset when you reboot. However, if you're just looking for a rough estimate of how much data you use before you get your mobile service, this may suffice. After you get your service, you will probably find that your carrier has a way of checking via a website.

Regarding bmike's answer, I believe he's talking about iOS.

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