A system for passive estimation of throughput in an electronic network is disclosed. The system may include an plurality of mobile devices configured to operate in the network and may further include an electronic data processor. The processor may be configured to access flow records for data flows associated with the mobile devices during a predetermined time interval. Additionally, the processor may be configured to annotate the flow records with an application field and a content provider field. The processor may also be configured to determine a flow type of each data flow based on the application field and the content provider field of the flow records. Furthermore, the processor may be configured to generate a throughput index that only includes non-rate-limited flow types. Moreover, the processor may be configured to estimate maximum throughput for each data flow having non-rate-limited flow types in the throughput index.