is the speed the same using cellular data on the ipad versus hotspot connection

No one can answer that for you until you do some research about your personal situation. The following variables are all important:

1) What wireless carrier do you use and what is the advertised maximum bandwidth of your 3G/4G/LTE connection?

2) How good a cellular signal (how many bars) do you get in the locations you use the iPad, or the hotspot in.

3) What type of "hotspot" are your planning on using?

4) Is the "hotspot" using cellular data as well, or is it a WiFi router instead?

5) If the hotspot uses WiFi then is the hotspot using (802.11a/b/g/n/ac)?

6) If the hotspot uses WiFi then how fast is it's connection to the ISP?

What you need to do is consider all of the maximum advertised bandwidth's involved in your potential cellular, and your hotspot connections, and then reduce each by about 20% for real-world bandwidth expectations. Then, the slowest link in the chain is what you can expect from each connection.

Good call bobseufert. The simple thing to try that should take all of the variables I listed into account is to just try it with a speed test app and see how they compare.

Also, assuming that you are using the same cell carrier and connection speed for both the iPhone and iPad, I would assume that the iPad using a direct cell connection would be faster.

Would an app like Speedtest help ? First try it on cellular tnen on your phone's hotspot.

Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test by Ookla

https://appsto.re/us/prg7r.i

Thanks. My suggestion was the easy way out. I like how you broke the downloading into it's variables.