This article introduces the billing policy for the real-time communication (RTC) service provided by Agora.
Starting in February 2021, Agora adopted tiered pricing as the default billing method. Tiered pricing has several advantages over the previous default method, including:
Agora calculates the billing of all projects under your Agora account monthly.
Billing for RTC begins once you implement an RTC function, such as audio call, group video call, or interactive live video streaming, using the Agora RTC SDK.
On the first day of each month, Agora sends you your bill for the previous month's usage via mail, and five days later deducts the payment from your account. For details, see Billing, fee deduction, and account suspension.
Agora calculates your billing based on the usage of all sessions under each project. The billing for each session equals the total sum of charges for all users in the session.
At the end of each month, Agora adds up the usage duration (in seconds) of audio and video in each category, and divides them by 60 to get the respective service minutes (rounded up to the nearest integer). Then, Agora multiplies the service minutes by the corresponding pricing to get the cost of that month.
Cost = audio charges + video charges = audio pricing × audio service minutes + video pricing × video service minutes
The usage duration of each session equals the total sum of service minutes of all users in the session.
For each user, Agora calculates the service minutes (accurate to seconds) from the user joining a channel to the user leaving the channel.
Depending on the subscribing behavior of the user, service minutes comprises the following:
Agora uses a tiered pricing method for usage based on cumulative monthly service minutes. There are four tiers. As usage reaches a new tier, an increasing discount is applied and the unit price for both audio and video in that tier decreases.
The tiered discounts and pricing are as follows:
Monthly cumulative service minutes |
Discount |
Unit price for audio ($US/1,000 minutes) |
Unit price for video ($US/1,000 minutes) | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
High-Definition (HD) | Full High-Definition (Full HD) | 2K | 2K+ | |||
0 to 99,999 |
0 | 0.99 | 3.99 | 8.99 | 15.99 | 35.99 |
100,000 to 499,999 |
5% | 0.94 | 3.79 | 8.54 | 15.19 | 34.19 |
500,000 to 999,999 |
7% | 0.92 | 3.71 | 8.36 | 14.87 | 33.47 |
1,000,000+ |
10% | 0.89 | 3.59 | 8.09 | 14.39 | 32.39 |
Agora adds up the resolution of all the video streams a user subscribes to at the same time to determine the user's video aggregate resolution, which categorizes video as follows:
Video category | Video aggregate resolution |
---|---|
High-Definition (HD) | Up to 921,600 (1280 × 720) |
Full High-Definition (Full HD) | From greater than 921,600 (1280 × 720) to 2,073,600 (1920 × 1080) |
2K | From greater than 2,073,600 (1920 × 1080) to 3,686,400 (2560 × 1440) |
2K+ | From greater than 3,686,400 (2560 × 1440) to 8,847,360 (4096 × 2160) |
For example, if a user subscribes to two 960 × 720 video streams at the same time, the aggregate resolution is 960 × 720 + 960 × 720 = 1,382,400. The user is charged for Full HD video service.
This section shows how to calculate the monthly audio and video service minutes of each category, as well as the total cost based on the corresponding unit price.
Suppose you have an enabled project named Test under your Agora account, and the project uses the Agora RTC SDK to implement real-time communication functions.
The project has the following sessions between February 1 and February 28, 2021:
On February 3, 2021: Users A and B join the channel at the same time and have a voice call for 1,250 seconds.
In this session, both A and B use the audio service for 1,250 seconds.
Session | Audio | HD video | Full HD video | 2K video | 2K+ video |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Usage duration (in seconds) | 1,250 × 2 = 2,500 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
On February 8, 2021: User A joins a video streaming channel and hosts for 1,808 seconds. Users B, C, and D watch the live streaming. The video resolution of A is 1920 × 1080.
Since user A does not subscribe to any stream in the channel, A is charged for the audio service only. Users B, C, and D subscribe to the video with a resolution of 1920 × 1080, which belongs to Full HD video, so they are each charged for Full HD video service.
Session | Audio | HD video | Full HD video | 2K video | 2K+ video |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Usage duration (in seconds) | 1,808 | 0 | 1,808 × 3 = 5,424 | 0 | 0 |
On February 11, 2021: User A hosts in an interactive streaming channel, with two audience members, B and C. The video resolution of A is 1920 × 1080. 568 seconds later, audience member C changes their user role and co-hosts with A for 600 seconds. The video resolution of C is 1280 × 720.
Session | Audio | HD video | Full HD video | 2K video | 2K+ video |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Usage duration (in seconds) | 568 | 600 | 568 + 568 + 600 = 1,736 | 600 | 0 |
Date | Actual usage duration (seconds) | Usage duration displayed on Agora Console (minutes) | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Audio |
HD video |
Full HD video |
2K video |
2K+ video |
Audio |
HD video |
Full HD video |
2K video |
2K+ video |
|
2020-02-03 | 2,500 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2020-02-08 | 1,808 | 5,424 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 91 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2020-02-11 | 568 | 600 | 1,736 | 600 | 0 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 0 |
Monthly usage | 4,876 | 6,024 | 1,736 | 600 | 0 | 83 | 101 | 29 | 10 | 0 |
Billable service minutes | 82 min | 101 min | 29 min | 10 min | 0 min | The usage displayed on Agora Console is for reference
only and not used as the actual billing basis. |
||||
Cost of each service ($US) |
(82/1000 ) × 0.99 = 0.08118 |
(101/1000) × 3.99 = 0.40299 |
(29/1000) × 8.99 = 0.26071 |
(10/1000) × 15.99 = 0.1599 |
||||||
Total cost ($US) |
0.90 (0.08118 + 0.40299 + 0.26071 + 0.1599 = 0.90478 ≈ 0.90) |
At the end of each month, Agora adds up the usage duration (in seconds) of audio and video in each category, and divides them by 60 to get the respective service minutes (rounded up to the nearest integer). For example, if the duration of audio service of the month is 59 seconds, then the audio service minutes is calculated as 1 minute; if the duration of video service is 61 seconds, then the video service minutes is calculated as 2 minutes. The margin of error for service minutes for each month is within 1 minute.
In dual-stream mode, the aggregate video resolution is calculated as follows:
In scenarios involving screen sharing, the unit price of the screen-sharing stream is calculated on the basis of the video dimension that you set in ScreenCaptureParameters
. For details, see descriptions in the following classes:
ScreenCaptureParameters
AgoraScreenCaptureParameters
When calculating the aggregate resolution, Agora counts the resolution of 225280 (640 × 352) as 640 × 360.
The pricing for audio and video is as follows:
Service type | Category | Pricing ($US/1,000 minutes) |
---|---|---|
Audio | N/A | 0.99 |
Video | High-Definition (HD) | 3.99 |
High-Definition Plus (HD+) | 14.99 |
Agora adds up the resolution of all the video streams a user subscribes to at the same time to determine the user's video aggregate resolution, which categorizes video as follows:
Video category | Video aggregate resolution |
---|---|
High-Definition (HD) | Up to 921,600 (1280 × 720) |
High-Definition Plus (HD+) | Greater than 921,600 (1280 × 720) |
For example, if a user subscribes to two 960 × 720 video streams at the same time, the aggregate resolution is 960 × 720 + 960 × 720 = 1,382,400. The user is charged for HD+ video service.