How much do video calls cost per minute? How to estimate your month

A price per minute for video calls looks simple until you try to turn it into a month. The minute in a price list is rarely a minute of a call. It is a minute of one person in a call, so one class of 32 people for an hour is 1,920 of them, and a month of classes is tens of thousands.

This post shows how to estimate a month for your own app: count the minutes, see what the size and length of a call do to them, tell video from audio, and work out how many connections you need. Then it works through a real month with our own prices, so you can put any price list through the same sums.

Count participant minutes

Video call services usually price by the participant minute: one person in a call for one minute. A month of them is three numbers multiplied:

People in the call × minutes per call × calls a month = participant minutes

The price list then turns them into money:

Participant minutes ÷ 1,000 × the price per 1,000 minutes = the cost

Here are four ordinary uses, each a month of its own:

In a month	Participant minutes
Calls between two people, 30 minutes, 100 times	6,000
A team meeting of 8, 30 minutes, 20 times	4,800
A class of 32, an hour, 22 times	42,240
A meeting of 100, an hour, 8 times	48,000

A class held 22 times comes close to a meeting of 100 held 8 times, because how often a call runs counts as much as how big it is.

What size and length do to the number

The three numbers multiply, so changes that look small add up. A class that grows from 20 people to 32, and from 45 minutes to an hour, goes from 900 minutes each time to 1,920, more than double.

A sum from a calendar also differs from what happens in real calls:

• People come and go. Of 100 people invited to a meeting, some join late and some leave early. Where time in the call is what is counted, someone who stays ten minutes counts for ten. The full number of people for the full length gives you a sum the real month should stay under.
• Calls run over. Count the length a call usually lasts, not the length it was booked for.
• Some months are busier than others. Estimate a busy one.

Minutes on video and minutes on audio

A camera picture in good quality is often sent at one to two megabits a second. A voice takes tens of kilobits, a small part of that, so a server forwarding a call on audio carries far fewer bytes. That is why price lists often set a lower price for an audio minute.

Before you use that price in your sums, check what makes a minute an audio minute. A service may look at what each person sends, or at the kind of call. On ours, a group call is a video call or an audio call from start to end, so someone with their camera off in a video call still counts on video. A call that never needs cameras should start as an audio call.

It can change a sum a lot, as the same meeting worked out both ways shows below.

What connections are

Minutes are one number. Connections are the other. A connection is a browser or a device connected to the service at that moment, which is how a call rings and how everyone learns who is in it. Everyone in a call holds one, every viewer of a live stream holds one, and so does anyone who has your app open and is in no call at all.

What counts is your busiest moment, not how many users you have in a month. An app with 10,000 users a month may never have more than 1,000 online at once, and your analytics can tell you that number. For a call or a stream, add its people to everyone else online at that time.

Two things keep the number down. The tabs of one browser can share a connection, so a person with three tabs open counts once. And what your server sends through an API holds no connection.

Where a plan is priced by connections, this number chooses the plan, and the minutes decide what comes on top of it.

What else can change the sum

Whichever service you estimate for, these can move the result more than the price of a minute:

• Resolution. Does a minute at a higher resolution cost the same as any other?
• Traffic. Are bandwidth and relays billed apart from the minutes?
• Calls between two people. Are they counted at all, and do they cost more when a firewall sends them through a relay?
• Viewers. Is a viewer of a live stream counted like a person in a call?
• Minutes in the plan. Does a plan include some, and what happens to those you did not use?

Our post on realtime and video call pricing covers the other ways services count, by the message and by the connection.

What a minute costs on WordPlus Cloud

WordPlus Cloud for Apps is priced by concurrent connections, starting from 1,000, billed monthly or yearly: from $11.99 a month for 1,000 connections billed yearly, or $14.99 billed monthly. Prices are in US dollars, before tax.

• Group calls above your plan cost $0.20 per 1,000 minutes, $0.10 on audio. A viewer of a live stream above your plan costs the same as a person on video.
• What the plan includes. With 1,000 connections, up to 32 people on video at once in group calls, a person on audio counting half, and 50 viewers at once in live streams take no credits. Each further 1,000 connections add 12 people on video and 20 viewers. Each is counted across your whole app at that moment, so two calls of 20 at the same time are 40 people at once, 8 of them above what the plan includes.
• Credits. A credit is a minute of one person on video or one viewer, and a person on audio takes half. Your plan adds 5,000 a month for each 1,000 connections, and these do not carry over to the next month. Packs add more, from $10 for 50,000, and those stay yours while you have a plan. Larger packs come down to $0.18 per 1,000.
• What is never charged. One price at every resolution. Bandwidth, relays and messages are never charged, and calls between two people are included, relayed or not. We run our own relays and media servers, which keeps these prices low.

A worked month

Take the plan for 1,000 connections, billed yearly, at $11.99 a month. Each row below is a month of its own, the same ones we show on our page for apps:

In a month	Credits above your plan	Cost
Calls between two people, as many as you like	None	$11.99
A class of 32 on video, an hour, 22 times	None	$11.99
A meeting of 100 on video, an hour, 8 times	27,640	about $17.52
A live stream to 1,000 viewers, an hour, 4 times	223,000	about $56.59

Here is how the sums go:

• The class. 32 × 60 × 22 = 42,240 participant minutes. All 32 are within what the plan includes, so they take no credits.
• The meeting. 100 × 60 × 8 = 48,000 participant minutes. 32 of the 100 are within the plan, which leaves 68 × 60 × 8 = 32,640 credits. The plan adds 5,000 a month, which leaves 27,640. At $0.20 per 1,000 that is $5.53, and with the plan about $17.52.
• The same meeting on audio. A person on audio counts half, so 100 people weigh as 50. That leaves 18 × 60 × 8 = 8,640 credits, 3,640 after the 5,000 from the plan, and about $12.72 with the plan.
• The live stream. 1,000 × 60 × 4 = 240,000 viewer minutes. 50 of the 1,000 viewers are within the plan, which leaves 950 × 60 × 4 = 228,000 credits, and 223,000 after the 5,000. That is $44.60, and with the plan about $56.59.

All of it in one month, with the class, the meeting on video and the live stream at different times: 32,640 + 228,000 = 260,640 credits, and 255,640 after the 5,000. That is $51.13, and with the plan about $63.12.

The busiest moment of that month is the live stream, at 1,000 viewers, so the plan for 1,000 connections fits as long as few others are online at that time. Up to 20% more connect for a while, and we email you at 80% and 100% of your connections. If that is your everyday busiest moment, choose more connections from your account, which also brings more people on video, more viewers and more credits.

We say "about" because credits come in packs and stay yours while you have a plan, so one month can come to more than this and the next to less. The live stream above could use a pack of 250,000 for $50 and leave 27,000 for the next month.

Credits are bought ahead, so a busy month never arrives as a surprise bill. Your plan can borrow up to a month of its own credits from the next month. Past that, people in a call stay, and nobody new above what the plan includes joins until you add more.

Work out your own month

Take your largest calls, how long they run and how often, and your busiest moment. The calculator on our pricing page does the sums with your own numbers, video calls and group calls for your app shows what the SDKs give you, and the limits in our docs list every number. A WordPress site is priced per site, with its own numbers for group calls: see WordPlus Cloud for WordPress. Questions about your integration? Write to us.